Author: Jeremy Ryan

HM Treasury has laid the final draft of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Cryptoassets) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2026, which would narrow parts of the UK’s forthcoming crypto regulatory perimeter for UK qualifying stablecoin payments.The draft instrument, laid before Parliament on Sept. 15, would remove qualifying transfers from the rules for dealing as principal, dealing as agent and arranging deals. It has not been made and is not in force.The relief is narrower than a blanket exemption for sterling stablecoins. A UK qualifying stablecoin must be issued through the regulated article 9M activity by a firm holding the relevant…

The market’s reaction to CLARITY could be a reality check for crypto. After the downtick, the total crypto market cap shed more than $120 billion, dropping to $2.54 trillion. This also marked its lowest wick since the mid-August cycle. However, the bigger risk could come over the next 24 hours, with the FOMC meeting now in focus. The key takeaway? Rate expectations are starting to line up in a way that could put more pressure on crypto. As seen in the chart below, central bank watchers now overwhelmingly expect not only a rate hike this week, but another hike before…

Between 2012 and 2025, global mobile data traffic grew more than 50% annually while operator service revenue increased less than 1% per year, according to McKinsey figures cited by Iris. Telecom operators bring something financial apps often spend heavily trying to build: customers, verified identities and distribution. That can be particularly powerful in emerging markets. “In the U.S. the operator is like one rail among many,” Ava Labs Chief Business Officer John Nahas told CoinDesk. In markets such as Bolivia, by contrast, “the mobile carrier is often the rail that people do everything on.” That is why Iris expects its…

OpenAssets, a capital markets infrastructure provider focused on tokenization, has made its tokenization infrastructure available through AWS Marketplace. The new listing allows banks, asset managers, exchanges, and other institutions to deploy the OpenAssets operating system in their own Amazon Web Services (AWS) environments. The company says this approach lets institutions keep tokenization operations within infrastructure they already manage. Issuance, settlement, compliance, and asset servicing can all run inside the institution’s AWS account, without relying on a separate third-party platform. OpenAssets provides infrastructure for issuing and managing tokenized assets throughout their lifecycle. The system also includes compliance and transfer-agent tools, as…

After a strong August rally, where the Spot Bitcoin [BTC] ETFs recorded $3.52 billion in inflows in a month, the September effect seems to be kicking in. In the past week, from 8th to 11th September, BTC ETFs recorded outflows worth $462.73 million. The week started on a negative note with a cumulative net outflow reaching $46.6 million. This was mainly because of Fidelity’s $17.1 million, Invesco’s $4.7 million, and particularly Grayscale GBTC, which saw a huge $65.5M outflow.  Bitcoin ETFs’ weekly flow analysis On 9th September, selling pressure became stronger with BlackRock experiencing a $19.5 million outflow, ARKB losing…

One thing stands out in the recent market setback caused by the CLARITY Act news. While the overall market environment saw a significant breakdown with high-cap assets rejecting crucial support levels, XRP was one of the hardest-hit assets, closing the day down nearly 10% with the lowest wick retreating to $1.27. This marks the first time XRP has retested this level in over a month. However, the timing of the move may be the critical factor in assessing whether it is a healthy deleveraging or a trend reversal move. As observed in the chart below, XRP’s 10% correction came on…

The US Senate failed on Sept. 15 to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, stalling efforts to create a federal framework for crypto markets as Bitcoin fell sharply below $76,000.The cloture vote on the motion to proceed failed 49-50, and the measure needed 60 votes to move to debate, so the result was a procedural defeat.The bill was designed to replace the industry’s fragmented regulatory environment with uniform federal rules for issuing, trading and selling digital assets. Its failure to advance leaves that wider market-structure push unresolved and denies supporters an immediate path to floor debate.The Senate’s official schedule…

The institutional demand around Bitcoin strengthened as Morgan Stanley expanded MSBT holdings while ETF inflows remained positive. Reportedly, Morgan Stanley’s MSBT Bitcoin ETF received another 51.58 BTC, valued at around $4 million, from Coinbase Prime. Notably, the latest transaction followed a series of transfers into the fund for the previous two weeks. Across these transfers, MSBT has now received a total of 641.87 BTC, worth roughly $50.6 million. Therefore, Morgan Stanley’s persistent accumulation enhanced Bitcoin’s institutional demand narrative as its price consolidated after a rapid expansion. Importantly, the transfers showed several additions across the two-week period, rather than reflecting a…

Spokesperson: Alexis Cathalifaud, CEO As demand for artificial intelligence compute continues to grow, the infrastructure supporting that demand is becoming a strategic consideration in its own right. Companies across the sector are racing to secure access to increasingly powerful GPUs, while questions around electricity, data-center capacity, cooling and connectivity are becoming harder to separate from the compute itself. Clichmont is taking a different approach. Rather than building its model primarily around rented GPU capacity, the company is focused on owning and controlling the physical infrastructure on which successive generations of AI hardware can operate. In this interview, Clichmont CEO Alexis…

U.S. authorities are filing a civil forfeiture complaint targeting approximately $61 million in cryptocurrency tied to black-market sales of sanctioned Iranian crude oil and petroleum products. The U.S. Attorney’s Office says two Chinese companies, Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale, used trading accounts at Binance to launder the proceeds and funnel them to the Government of Iran, its agents, proxies, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated terrorist organization. Blessed Trust allegedly presented itself to financial and cryptocurrency service providers as a wealth management and virtual asset custody firm. Prosecutors say the company instead handled proceeds from Iranian crude oil…