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FBI Director Discloses Strategy Holdings Months After Deadline: Report

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FBI Director Discloses Strategy Holdings Months After Deadline: Report

Kash Patel, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) , reportedly omitted reporting exposure to Bitcoin treasury company Strategy, in violation of federal law.

According to a Wednesday report from the nonpartisan nonprofit news agency NOTUS, Patel “inadvertently omitted” a Strategy (MSTR) investment worth as much as $250,000. The purchase, which Patel conducted on Nov. 21, 2025, wasn’t included in his December 2025 financial disclosures, as required for a government official under the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act.

Source: NOTUS

Patel filed an amended report on May 26, indicating that the Strategy holdings were “inadvertently omitted” and “no current conflict exists” with the investment. Under the STOCK Act, some government officials and lawmakers must disclose financial transactions exceeding $1,000 no later than 45 days after executing the trade. Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, is a registered US government contractor, raising concerns about conflicts of interest with Patel’s investments.

Although signed into law in 2012, the STOCK Act has come under fire from many in Congress who claim that lawmakers and White House officials who violate it do not face severe penalties. First-time violators are only subject to a $200 fine under the law, with additional penalties falling short of the hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars offered in disclosures.

Related: Apple fixes bug that allowed FBI to read deleted Signal messages

Patel isn’t the only member of Congress or policymaker to fall behind in his Strategy investment disclosures. According to Capitol Trades, a website tracking politicians’ investments, Representative Shri Thanedar waited until August 2025 to report a $15,001 to $50,000 investment in Strategy made in June 2024.

Trump discloses $1.4 billion in crypto-related income

The FBI director’s reported late disclosures came in the wake of President Donald Trump’s release of financial records that revealed that his cryptocurrency ventures generated more than $1.4 billion in income in 2025, exceeding that of his real estate businesses.

Many US lawmakers have criticized the president for profiting from his position while in office through his memecoin launch, his family’s crypto platform World Liberty Financial, and his sons’ Bitcoin mining venture.

Magazine: Big Questions: Do we really only need 2–5 cryptocurrencies?

eToro Takes Strategic Stake in Onchain Derivatives Exchange Extended, Plans Zengo Tie-Up

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eToro Takes Strategic Stake in Onchain Derivatives Exchange Extended, Plans Zengo Tie-Up

eToro has become a strategic investor in Extended, an onchain perpetual futures exchange, and said the round begins a partnership with Zengo, the self-custody wallet eToro acquired earlier this year. Neither company disclosed the investment size.

EToro has become a strategic investor in Extended, an onchain perpetual futures exchange, and said the funding round marks the start of a partnership between Extended and Zengo, the self-custody wallet eToro acquired earlier this year, according to a post from Extended.

Extended said on X that eToro “is now a strategic investor” and that the partnership will focus on “expanding access to global financial markets through next-generation on-chain infrastructure,” describing it as a step toward “bridging traditional financial assets and decentralized trading environments.”

Neither eToro nor Extended disclosed the size of the investment in their own statements, and neither had published a dedicated press release on the deal as of publication. CoinDesk reported the round totaled $12.5 million.

Extended is a perpetuals decentralized exchange built on Starknet, founded by former Revolut employees including Ruslan Fakhrutdinov, the fintech’s former crypto head. According to Extended’s own documentation, the exchange supports more than 100 markets spanning crypto, equities, foreign exchange and commodities, the kind of cross-asset venue eToro said it wants to connect to a self-custody wallet.

The investment builds on eToro’s acquisition of Zengo, a self-custodial wallet provider, which the two companies announced in April in a deal Bloomberg and other outlets reported was worth roughly $70 million. In its own release, eToro said the Zengo deal was meant to “accelerate its strategy of connecting traditional finance with on-chain infrastructure,” and Zengo co-founder and CEO Ouriel Ohayon said joining eToro would let the wallet “expand access to self-custody and on-chain finance.” Pairing Zengo’s custody with Extended’s derivatives engine would let eToro offer onchain perpetuals to wallet users who keep control of their own assets.

The move places eToro alongside other retail brokerages pushing into onchain trading. Robinhood this week launched the public mainnet of Robinhood Chain, its own Arbitrum-based Layer 2 for financial services and real-world assets, as brokers race to build out onchain product suites and move beyond simple crypto spot trading.

Securitize (SECZ) takes $295M of its own tokenized stock to Solana, Avalanche amid NYSE debut

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Securitize (SECZ) takes $295M of its own tokenized stock to Solana, Avalanche amid NYSE debut

The opportunity has drawn growing interest across Wall Street. Citi projected that tokenized securities could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030, while Boston Consulting Group and Ripple estimated the market could grow to $18.9 trillion by 2033.

“We have long said that public equities are moving onchain, and there is no stronger validation of that belief than tokenizing our own public stock on day one,” CEO Carlos Domingo said in a statement.

Issuer-sponsored tokenization

Unlike many existing tokenized stock products, which are issued by third parties or offered outside the United States, Securitize said SECZ is an issuer-sponsored tokenization of the company’s own shares. Eligible U.S. investors can buy the tokenized stock through Securitize’s platform after completing identity verification and meeting securities law requirements.

The launch doubles as a showcase for Securitize’s business.

The company, founded in 2017, has spent years building tokenization infrastructure for firms including BlackRock, Apollo, KKR, Hamilton Lane and VanEck, providing issuance, transfer agency and fund administration services for blockchain-based securities.

Earlier this year, NYSE parent company Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) partnered with Securitize to develop infrastructure for tokenized equities. It also teamed up with Computershare and Continental, two of the world’s largest transfer agents, to help public firms issue their shares in token form on blockchain rails.

Russia on Track for Digital Ruble Rollout on Sept. 1: Central Bank Governor

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Russia on Track for Digital Ruble Rollout on Sept. 1: Central Bank Governor

Russia’s central bank governor, Elvira Nabiullina, confirmed that the country was prepared to roll out its central bank digital currency (CBDC) in two months, following the timeline it laid out last year. 

According to a Thursday report from Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti, Nabiullina said that “everyone is ready” for a Sept. 1 digital ruble launch. The CBDC will launch as a complement to Russia’s fiat currency, the ruble, and will initially be accepted by financial and credit institutions.

“We want the digital ruble to be in demand by people and businesses, to be convenient, and, of course, we’re constantly discussing […] what functionality to develop,” said Nabiullina in a translated statement.

Pile of 5000 ruble banknotes next to a keyboard on a white surface, viewed from above. Source: Polina Tankilevitch, Pexels

The launch of a digital ruble, whose development began in 2021, has already been targeted by preemptive sanctions from European Union authorities, which announced restrictions on the CBDC in April. The European Council said that the sanctions package was in response to Russia’s “war of aggression against Ukraine,” which it started in February 2022.

According to the Bank of Russia’s first deputy governor, Vladimir Chistyukhin, the law allowing the digital ruble will be enacted on Sept. 1 with a transition period until July 2027.

Related: Russia targets British 17-year-old for alleging digital assets were skirting sanctions

Dr. Jack Jarmon, who worked as a USAID technical adviser for the Russian government in the 1990s, said in a February 2025 report that the country could face “structural limitations” should its digital ruble plans fail and it relies on Bitcoin (BTC) and other proof-of-work (PoW) digital currencies as methods of evading sanctions.

“While Russia is replete with a surplus of oil and gas, the rest of its energy infrastructure is not well suited to handle such significant increases in demand for energy,” said Jarmon, referring to PoW mining. “Its power grid is old and in need of investment and upgrade.”

He added:

“The sanctions that Putin seeks to circumvent have cut Russia off from financial capital and technology. It has no domestic semiconductor industry to meet its needs and must rely on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for components […]”

US President weighing legislation with four-year CBDC ban

In contrast to Russia, the United States is one step away from having a ban on the country’s central bank issuing or creating a CBDC until 2030. This week, US President Donald Trump received the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a housing bill containing a ban on a digital dollar as part of a package of housing affordability laws.

Although Trump has said he will not sign the bill, expecting Republicans to first pass legislation requiring voters to provide proof of US citizenship in person to register, it will automatically become law in 10 days with no action on the president’s part. This timeline would put the law into effect in July. 

Magazine: Big Questions: Do we really only need 2–5 cryptocurrencies?

IMF Says Tokenization Could Reshape Global Finance, Warns of New Risks

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IMF Says Tokenization Could Reshape Global Finance, Warns of New Risks

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says tokenization could fundamentally reshape how financial markets operate, marking one of the strongest acknowledgments yet from a global policymaker that blockchain-based infrastructure is moving into the financial mainstream.

In a blog published Thursday, Tobias Adrian, the IMF’s financial counselor and director of its Monetary and Capital Markets Department, said tokenization is more than a niche crypto innovation. By bringing assets, settlement and recordkeeping onto a shared ledger, tokenization could compress today’s multi-day settlement process into near-instant transactions.

Adrian also warned that tokenization shifts risks away from traditional financial intermediaries and toward the underlying infrastructure, including smart contracts, distributed ledgers and service providers. Without common standards and coordinated regulation, tokenized financial markets could become fragmented across incompatible platforms, creating new sources of systemic risk.

Source: IMF

The report comes as financial institutions accelerate efforts to integrate tokenization into traditional markets. The Clearing House, whose owners include JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Barclays, reportedly plans to launch a tokenized deposit network in early 2027 to keep deposits within the regulated banking system while enabling faster, programmable payments.

The IMF’s assessment aligns with recent research from PwC, which found that tokenization could address longstanding inefficiencies in traditional finance, including payment settlement and the transfer of asset ownership. It also follows a May report from Moody’s showing that traditional financial institutions are actively preparing for a shift toward tokenized finance. 

Related: Tokenization makes finance more efficient but introduces risks: IMF

Regulators race to define tokenized finance

The IMF report emphasized the growing role of regulators in shaping tokenized finance. Adrian said policymakers have a narrow window to determine how tokenized markets evolve, arguing that decisions on settlement assets, governance, interoperability and the role of central banks will help determine whether tokenization makes the financial system more efficient or introduces new systemic risks.

In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission has taken steps to clarify how existing securities laws apply to tokenized assets rather than creating a separate regulatory framework. 

Source: Cointelegraph

The agency has also signaled it is considering an “innovation exemption” that could allow market participants to test blockchain-based trading platforms for tokenized securities while a longer-term regulatory framework is developed.

Magazine: Can Robinhood or Kraken’s tokenized stocks ever be truly decentralized?

EToro (ETOR) ramps up blockchain trading push, investing in derivatives venue Extended

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EToro (ETOR) ramps up blockchain trading push, investing in derivatives venue Extended

Perpetual futures, once a niche crypto product, have become one of the industry’s fastest-growing markets. Alongside cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, trading platforms are increasingly listing contracts tied to equities, commodities and other real-world assets, blurring the line between crypto-native and traditional financial markets.

Led by former Revolut crypto head Ruslan Fakhrutdinov, Extended had processed more than $245 billion in trading volume as of June and supports more than 100 perpetual markets, according to the company.

The firm said it plans to expand into spot trading, tokenized real-world assets and multi-asset collateral.

“The first phase was building for DeFi natives,” Fakhrutdinov said in a statement. “The next is expanding the infrastructure and partnerships needed to support the next stage of onchain derivatives.”

The investment points to a broader race to become what is best described as the “everything exchange” or “everything app” for financial markets. Coinbase (COIN) has expanded into perpetual futures, Robinhood is pairing tokenized stocks with event contracts and commodity perps, and prediction market operator Kalshi recently entered the perpetual futures business.

As trading increasingly moves onto a blockchain environment, the lines separating brokerages, crypto exchanges and prediction markets are becoming harder to distinguish.

“Capital markets are increasingly converging with digital asset infrastructure,” Zengo managing director Ouriel Ohayon, said in a statement. “eToro’s investment in Extended reflects a mutual conviction that the future of trading will be digital, accessible and can operate 24/7, beyond the traditional trading week.”

UK Payment Blueprint Outlines Tokenized Payments for ‘Multi-Money Ecosystem’

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UK Payment Blueprint Outlines Tokenized Payments for ‘Multi-Money Ecosystem’

UK regulators are calling for tokenization and “new forms of digital money” to be part of the core infrastructure of the country’s future retail payment ecosystem.

In a Thursday update to the government’s roadmap for modernizing retail payment systems, HM Treasury on behalf of the Payments Vision Delivery Committee said that including tokenization and digital money would advance its efforts to create a “diverse multi-money ecosystem.”

“Programmable payments, including those that rely on tokenization,” were named as potential “product-level arrangements” that may support payment innovation in the country, the agency update said.

The update of November’s National Payments Vision document calls for infrastructure that enables emerging forms of digital money to interact with traditional payment systems. 

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) earlier this week published its landmark crypto regulatory framework and said that the licensing window for crypto companies will open from September until Feb. 28, 2027, before the regime goes live on Oct. 25, 2027.

Under that framework, cryptocurrency firms, including trading platforms, custodians, stablecoin issuers, staking companies and other intermediaries, must obtain FCA authorization to operate in the UK under the new framework. 

Illustrative diagram of roles and responsibilities outlined in Payments Vision Delivery Committee update. Source: HM Treasury

UK plans payments overhaul to support tokenization, stablecoins

In April, the UK government said it would revisit its payments rulebook to support the adoption of new payment technologies, including stablecoins and tokenization.

It said that would include a consultation on reforms for payment services and electronic money rules to create a single framework for traditional and tokenized payments, including stablecoins and tokenized deposits, according to an April 21 announcement by HM Treasury and Economic Secretary to the Treasury Lucy Rigby. 

Related: Aave Labs’ Push gains UK FCA crypto registration

The following month, the Bank of England (BoE) proposed extending operating hours for its core settlement infrastructure toward near-24/7 availability, as part of a broader push with the FCA to prepare UK wholesale markets for tokenized finance. 

The BoE said the expanded operating hours would support cross-border payments and new payment and settlement models as tokenization develops. The central bank is seeking public feedback on the proposal until July 3 and plans to publish a feedback statement in the summer.

Call for input on the future of tokenization in UK wholesale markets. Source: FCA

The FCA said just days earlier that tokenization and distributed ledger technologies could make fund management more efficient and support the innovation of the UK asset management sector.

Magazine: How crypto laws changed in 2025 — and how they’ll change in 2026

dYdX Launches Arcus, a DEX Pairing Stock Tokens With Perpetuals on Robinhood Chain

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dYdX Launches Arcus, a DEX Pairing Stock Tokens With Perpetuals on Robinhood Chain

dYdX Labs founder Antonio Juliano launched Arcus, a new DEX combining tokenized stock trading with perpetual futures, built jointly with Robinhood Crypto on Robinhood Chain.

dYdX Labs launched Arcus on Wednesday, a decentralized exchange that combines tokenized stock trading with perpetual futures. Founder Antonio Juliano announced the launch on X, built jointly with Robinhood Crypto.

Arcus runs on Robinhood Chain, the EVM-compatible layer 2 that Robinhood opened to the public earlier the same day. Spot trading across 95 stock tokens is live now, letting users trade tokenized equities around the clock instead of only during market hours. Perpetuals covering 35 real-world-asset markets remain in a waitlist phase, dYdX said in its launch post.

Eddie Zhang, whose trading startup Pocket Protector was acquired by dYdX Labs, runs Arcus as chief executive. Juliano is joining its board, according to the dYdX blog post announcing the launch. The stock tokens give holders contractual economic exposure to the underlying equity rather than direct share ownership, the post said, the same tokenization structure Robinhood uses across the rest of Robinhood Chain.

dYdX, the decentralized perpetuals exchange that runs its own Cosmos-based appchain, holds $92.4 million in total value locked, per DefiLlama. Its DYDX token traded around $0.1451, according to CoinGecko. dYdX Chain v4 keeps operating alongside Arcus, with existing funds and positions unaffected, the blog post said.

Robinhood Crypto supplies the trading infrastructure and distribution to Robinhood’s user base for Arcus, but the brokerage has not issued its own statement naming Arcus or dYdX as of publication.

dYdX said a future Arcus token will reserve allocation for people who traded, staked or validated on dYdX, prioritizing the existing dYdX community over new entrants when the token launches. No launch date for that token or for the Arcus perpetuals waitlist has been set.

SBI Crypto to shut down mining pool that holds roughly 2% of Bitcoin’s hashrate

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SBI Crypto to shut down mining pool that holds roughly 2% of Bitcoin’s hashrate

SBI Crypto has announced it will shut down its mining pool on July 31, ending a service tied to one of Japan’s largest financial groups and giving miners less than a month to redirect their hashrate.

The pool will stop accepting mining shares, which represent a miner’s contributions in the pool, on the cutoff date, according to SBI Crypto. Shares submitted after that cutoff will not be accepted, and the firm said the pool is expected to operate normally until the shutdown date.

The company urged customers to keep mining with the pool until the cutoff so eligible shares are included in the final payout calculation.

SBI Crypto’s mining pool, according to data from Hashrateindex, accounts for roughly 2% of the Bitcoin network’s total hashrate. The firm did not disclose a reason for the closure in its shutdown notice, and it did not provide current hashrate figures for the pool.

SBI Crypto operates under SBI Group, the Japanese financial conglomerate. The mining pool opened to the public in 2021, with SBI saying at the time that it would support the pool with roughly 1.1 EH/s of its own mining power.

Bitcoin “Perfects” Its First TD9 Downtrend Reversal Signal Since 2022 Bear Market

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Bitcoin “Perfects” Its First TD9 Downtrend Reversal Signal Since 2022 Bear Market

Bitcoin (BTC) has delivered a key trend change setup in the latest sign that the macro downtrend could soon reverse.

Key points:

  • Bitcoin is seeing its first “perfected” TD9 indicator downtrend setup on monthly time frames since mid-2022.
  • While not a “buy signal” on its own, the move marks a key inflection phase in the bear market, analysis suggests.
  • RSI divergences continue to gain sway among those eyeing the final stages of the 2026 market downturn.

BTC price “perfected” TD9 setup echoes final bear-market stages

In an X post on Tuesday, analyst Tony Severino flagged a “perfected” buy signal on the TD9 indicator.

TD9 is a derivative of the Tom DeMark Sequential market timing indicator, which alerts traders to potential trend changes. Here, price triggers a notable signal when nine candles in a row close higher (in an uptrend) or lower (in a downtrend) than the closing price four candles prior.

“Bitcoin has ‘perfected’ a TD9 buy setup on the monthly,” Severino commented alongside data from TradingView.

BTC/USD one-month chart with TD9 indicator data. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

The setup is Bitcoin’s first in several years on monthly time frames, with the last TD9 downtrend signal coming in July 2022.

At the time, BTC/USD spent another five months ironing out its bear-market bottom, and as Severino notes, a completed TD9 setup does not “necessarily mean that the bottom is in.”

“Not a buy signal by itself. But if it holds into the close, it’s the kind of thing you pay attention to,” Tony Carrera, host of the Proof of Pain podcast, wrote in a further X post. 

“TD 9s are where you stop chasing fear, zoom out, and ask: Is this where $BTC reminds everyone what happens when they think it’s dead?”

RSI divergences spark “good odds” for Bitcoin’s bullish comeback

As Cointelegraph reported, consensus among market participants still favors new macro lows coming before the bear market truly reverses.

Related: Bitcoin just $5K away from ‘best investment opportunity’ of bear market

Targets differ, with $55,000 now popular, while BTC price cycle comparisons put the current bear market at just over two-thirds complete.

By contrast, bullish divergences across multiple time frames are locking in on the relative strength index (RSI) — a classic hint that trend change is due.

“Not sure I have ever seen more confirmed and potential bullish divergence with oversold RSI on more time frames, ever,” trader, analyst and podcast host Scott Melker told X followers on Wednesday. 

“Divs building over multiple time frames is my favorite signal. Good odds.”

BTC/USD one-day chart with four-hour, one-day, one-week RSI data. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

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