The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has urged businesses relying on its sector wide no action position for digital assets to apply for an Australian Financial Services (AFS) licence by September 30 or risk being penalized.

 

The sector wide no action position, which was introduced on October 29, 2025, when ASIC updated its INFO 225 guidance, provided greater clarity on why digital asset businesses operating in the country may need an AFS licence.

 

Recognizing that several crypto businesses still needed time to understand the new guidelines, ASIC extended the deadline for mandatory AFS licensing from June 30 to September 30.

 

Although the response from businesses regarding compliance appears to have been positive, with ASIC recording more than 45 applications, the regulator has issued a final reminder to businesses yet to comply with the directive.

 

According to the regulator, businesses that fail to obtain the required AFS authorization by the September deadline risk breaching the country’s financial laws and could face civil and criminal penalties that could potentially reach 10% of their annual company turnover.

 

ASIC’s reminder to comply with the new regulatory guidelines comes at a time when the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), the country’s anti money laundering and counter terrorism financial intelligence unit, is stepping up enforcement against businesses providing regulated virtual asset services without being properly enrolled under Australia’s AML/CTF regime.

 

So far, about four crypto firms have been suspended, including Cryptolink, whose registration has been withdrawn, while about 96 of its crypto ATMs have been taken down across the country.

 

Two Thai businessmen, Nutthawat Rukthammachalern and Natthawat Kasamvilas, have filed a lawsuit against stablecoin issuer Tether over the alleged seizure of $42.4 million worth of USDT.

 

The lawsuit, which was filed by the plaintiffs this week in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, challenges the seizure of the crypto funds by the stablecoin issuer, alleging that it was carried out without proper legal backing.

 

According to the suit filed with the court, the plaintiffs claim that the seizure involved funds held across 10 Ethereum addresses that were blacklisted by Tether. They allege that the blacklist was created solely based on an informal request from a U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent and without a warrant, court order, or other formal legal process.

 

 

Defending how the funds were obtained, the plaintiffs claimed that the frozen USDT assets were acquired through secondary market business transactions that had no direct relationship with Tether whatsoever.

 

Post-seizure Recovery Efforts

 

After discovering that Tether had frozen the funds October last year, one of the plaintiffs, Natthawat Kasamvilas, emailed the stablecoin issuer to inquire why he could no longer control the funds and asked to regain full custody of them.

 

However, Kasamvilas claimed that Tether replied by asking him to contact a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), whose email address the company provided, while failing to provide a legal basis for the freeze.

 

Although earlier this year, in February, a U.S. Magistrate Judge in the Eastern District of North Carolina ordered the seizure of $61 million worth of USDT that was reportedly linked to a pig butchering and money laundering scam, the plaintiffs claim that the seizure of their funds occurred months before the judge issued the order. They also allege that Tether continued to earn yield from the frozen assets.

 

Prediction market Polymarket has said it is ready to police trading on its platform, especially as the U.S. midterm elections draw closer.

 

Confirming its preparedness for the midterm elections, Shana Bautista, Polymarket's global head of investigations and intelligence, told Reuters that the platform is not only ready to surveil midterm trading but is also working to abide by the U.S. Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) of keeping U.S. users off its international platform.

 

"I'm confident that I'm able to get the resources and the support I need," Bautista told Reuters. "I can tell you that we have the systems in place to be able to identify anomalous activity when the midterms do come."

 

By reiterating its preparedness for midterm trading, Bautista helps dispel concerns several U.S. lawmakers have long had about the role prediction markets play in insider trading, which they say threatens national security and undermines election integrity.

 

As part of its surveillance strategy for midterm trading, Polymarket will launch a new web page explaining how it protects market integrity and cooperates with law enforcement.

 

According to Bautista, this webpage outlines how Polymarket uses machine learning, blockchain analytics, trade surveillance, open source research, and third parties to spot malicious trading and insider activity on the platform. 

 

Although this program being integrated is not entirely new, Bautista said Polymarket will provide an in-depth explanation of how it works.

 

Efforts to Curb Insider Trading

 

Polymarket has consistently implemented several measures to curb insider trading and other malicious activities on its platform. Among these measures is its partnership with security firm Chainalysis and Palantir Technologies to implement several multilayered surveillance systems on its platform.

 

It has also actively worked with law enforcement to prosecute traders involved in malicious trading activities. Notable among these was its work with law enforcement in April this year to prosecute Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who was charged with using classified, nonpublic military information to trade on the platform.

 

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has announced a S$220 million, roughly $173 million, fund aimed at supporting the country’s fintech ecosystem.

 

The fund, which is part of Singapore’s renewed Financial Sector Technology and Innovation Scheme (FSTI 4.0), aims to strengthen the country’s fintech sector and accelerate innovation and technology adoption across its financial sector.

 

According to MAS, FSTI 4.0 is designed around four main goals: scaling innovation across Singapore, accelerating financial technology adoption, developing technology infrastructure to support innovation, and supporting talent development.

 

To support the implementation of FSTI 4.0, MAS said the scheme will be implemented across six tracks covering different areas, including institutional innovation, artificial intelligence adoption, platforms, and talent development.

 

Singapore has consistently ranked among the leading global fintech hubs. With more than 1,800 fintech companies, the country recorded approximately $2.3 billion in fintech investment in 2025.

 

Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Vietnam’s new crypto penalty rules, officially known as Decree No. 284/2026/ND-CP, will take effect on September 1. The decree establishes administrative fines for violations of the country’s crypto asset regulations.

 

Some of the key provisions include fines of up to VND 200 million, roughly $7,700, for organizations and VND 100 million, roughly $3,800, for individuals who violate the country’s digital asset rules.

 

Providing crypto asset services or advertising such services without approval from Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance may attract a fine of up to VND 180 million to VND 200 million, roughly $7,000. Meanwhile, domestic investors who trade outside licensed platforms may face fines of VND 30 million to VND 50 million, roughly $1,100 to $1,900.

 

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has fined Gabriel Perez, a former White House teleprompter operator, $172,000 over bets on President Trump’s speeches.

 

In a press release, the CFTC said Perez traded presidential market contracts during his time as a White House teleprompter operator. These contracts are event contracts that reflect words or phrases that the president may use during his speeches.

 

Due to his position at the White House, Perez had direct access to presidential speeches before they were delivered, allowing him to make more than $107,000 in profits between December 2025 and February 2026.

 

According to the CFTC, Perez’s actions constituted a breach of his duty of trust and confidence, leading the agency to impose a civil monetary penalty of $65,000 and order him to disgorge the $107,539.02 in profits he made from the unlawful trading.

 

A three year trading ban was also imposed on him, with the agency stating that Perez agreed to a cease and desist order resolving the violations of the Commodity Exchange Act.

 

Earlier White House Suspension

 

Gabriel Perez was a longtime White House teleprompter operator who had worked with President Trump as far back as 2016, during Trump’s first presidential campaign.

 

However, in March of this year, Kalshi’s surveillance systems flagged unusual trading patterns that did not involve the typical buying and selling behavior of most traders.

 

Upon investigation, Kalshi discovered that the account was owned by a federal White House teleprompter operator, prompting the prediction market to lock the account, which had generated more than $90,000 in profits, and refer the matter to the CFTC along with the evidence it had uncovered.

 

Following the allegations, Perez was placed on unpaid administrative leaaave by the White House. According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, the allegations were “deeply unfortunate and frankly a disgrace.”

 

By late July, the White House released a statement saying that Gabriel Perez was no longer working for the federal government.

 

The California Senate and Assembly have unanimously passed a bill that would restrict public officeholders from issuing memecoin tokens.

 

The bill, coded AB 2409, was introduced by Assemblymember Avelino Valencia on February 20 this year. It passed the California Senate with a 40-0 vote and the Assembly with a 78-0 vote.

 

By passing the bill, California lawmakers aim to prevent public officials from using the authority bestowed upon them by virtue of their public positions for personal gain. The bill states that all public officeholders are to exercise their authority solely for the benefit of the people of California.

 

The bill further states that the issuance or promotion of financial instruments, including memecoins, could undermine public confidence in government and create opportunities for conflicts of interest and pay-to-play arrangements. These arrangements could potentially be exploited by foreign elements seeking to interfere in the affairs of the state.

 

Although the bill has been passed by lawmakers, enforcement will begin on January 1, 2027. From that date onward, digital asset providers will be prohibited from listing for sale any memecoin linked to a public official or facilitating the purchase of such memecoins by California residents.

 

To enable enforcement, the bill allows the California attorney general, a district attorney, city attorney, or county counsel to file a civil action against any digital asset service provider.

 

TRUMP Coin as a Case in Point 

 

Although the TRUMP memecoin profited a relatively small group of people, the losses it caused investors were significant, with approximately $3.2 billion to $3.81 billion in realized and unrealized losses recorded.

 

According to The New York Times, two-thirds of investors who purchased the TRUMP token ended up underwater, with Nansen projecting that about 988,900 to 1 million wallets out of roughly 1.6 million total wallets were in the red. 

 

Brazil’s central bank has announced plans to implement a system that monitors threats to crypto assets and issues real time alerts when potential risks are detected.

 

The monitoring system, which is being developed through a partnership between Brazil’s central bank and blockchain security firm Hypernative, has reportedly been tested with market participants and will be implemented by industry associations within the next two weeks.

 

When launched, either the central bank or Hypernative will be able to receive these alerts and distribute the messages to their members in real time.

 

Speaking to Valor Econômico, Brazil’s largest financial publication, Regina Pedroso, executive director of the Brazilian Tokenization Association, said the initiative began to be discussed at the end of last year, when the central bank began forming a working group among blockchain associations tasked with monitoring and warning of cyberattacks.

 

According to Pedroso, the monitoring system was tested among member blockchain associations, including Mercado Bitcoin and Foxbit, two of Brazil’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. Pedroso also noted that the central bank had already issued a bulletin outlining how the system will be implemented among association members.

 

The launch of the monitoring system by Brazil’s central bank underscores the country’s efforts to track threats involving crypto assets, particularly because cryptocurrencies can provide an exit rail for cybercriminals and fraudsters.

 

Although there has not been any major institutional cyberattack in Brazil this year, the country suffered several security incidents last year, most notably the hack of C&M Software, a technology company that connects smaller banks and fintechs to the central bank’s systems.

 

The hack reportedly led to the loss of approximately $140 million to $180 million, with $30 million to $40 million of the stolen funds reportedly converted into cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ether, and USDT, through OTC desks and exchanges in the region.

 

The Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC) has announced its decision to block domestic access to prediction market Polymarket over concerns that its activities constitute illegal gambling.

 

The decision, announced Tuesday, was reached after the Telecommunications Deliberation Subcommittee, chaired by Kim Woo Seok, a standing commissioner of the Broadcasting, Media and Communications Review Board, unanimously voted to block access to the platform.

 

According to the committee, Polymarket’s activities abet or promote gambling under the National Sports Promotion Act. Although Polymarket claimed in response to the ban that it had removed its Korean language service and that payments in Korean won were unavailable, the committee rejected the claim, saying domestic laws cannot be evaded based on service methods or other technical characteristics.

 

"As Polymarket provides a winner take all profit and loss structure based on chance, focusing on domestic specific issues such as Seoul precipitation levels in August, thereby creating a practical illegal gambling environment for domestic users, access blocking measures are inevitable to protect domestic users," the committee added.

 

The committee also asserted that, before reaching its decision, it sought the opinions of other relevant agencies, including the Korean National Police Agency, the National Gambling Control Commission, and the Korea Sports Promotion Foundation. According to the committee, these agencies shared the view that Polymarket’s activities constituted the crime of gambling.

 

Korea’s ban on Polymarket comes shortly after the French Autorité nationale des jeux (ANJ) banned the prediction market’s activities, citing the promotion of illegal gambling activities.

 

With its recent ban, South Korea has now joined the list of more than 30 countries and jurisdictions that have blocked or restricted access to Polymarket.

 

 

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has granted President Trump-backed World Liberty Financial preliminary conditional approval to establish World Liberty Trust Company, N.A., a national trust bank that would oversee its USD1 stablecoin operations.

 

Since the charter is conditional, World Liberty Trust Company will serve as a limited purpose national trust bank, handling the fiduciary and trust aspects of the USD1 stablecoin, including the issuance and redemption of the stablecoin, management of the reserves backing USD1, and custody services for institutional clients using USD1.

 

Regarding the regulatory milestone, Zach Witkoff, CEO and co-founder of World Liberty Financial, wrote in an X post, “Rigorous oversight, institutional controls and clear accountability are how stablecoins become trusted financial infrastructure.”

 

“Our ambition is clear: to build the most trusted and widely used digital dollar in the world while strengthening the role of the U.S. dollar across the global economy.”

 

As part of the conditions stated by the OCC in its approval letter, World Liberty Trust Company must restrict its activities strictly to those relating to trust activities. If it intends to deviate from these activities, the bank must provide the OCC with 60 days’ prior notice.

 

Before any executive is appointed, World Liberty Trust Company must submit information about the executives to the OCC and receive a non-objection letter from the regulator.

 

The trust bank will initially be governed by a five member team: Zach Witkoff, who will serve as board chair; Scott Alper, President and Chief Investment Officer of Witkoff Group; Robert Witkoff, former Co-Chief Investment Officer of The Chubb Corporation; Jeffrey Weiner, former Chairman and CEO of Marcum LLP, one of the largest accounting firms in the U.S.; and Erin Baskett, a member of the FINRA Board of Governors and founder of brokerage firm Sine Qua Non Capital.

 

 

BitMEX, one of the leading cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges, has announced that it will permanently shut down operations on September 23, 2026.

 

While the company did not provide an explicit reason for the decision, it said in a blog post that the move followed a strategic review of the business and the broader cryptocurrency industry conducted by the board of HDR Global Trading Limited, BitMEX's parent company.

 

Image credit: x.com

 

Following the announcement, BitMEX urged users to close all open positions and withdraw their funds from the platform as soon as possible.

 

To ensure an orderly wind-down, the exchange said it will begin applying risk limits, including allowing users only to reduce existing positions and preventing them from opening new ones. Any positions that remain open after the closure date will be forcibly closed, and the company added that it will not be responsible for any losses incurred during the process.

 

For users who have completed Know Your Customer verification but fail to withdraw their funds, BitMEX said it will charge an annual account maintenance fee equal to the greater of $50 or 1% of the account balance. Although all trading positions will be closed by the September 23 deadline, users will still be able to log in to their accounts and view their wallet balances.

About BitMEX

 

BitMEX, or Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange, is a cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform co-founded in 2014 by Arthur Hayes, a former derivatives trader at Deutsche Bank, Ben Delo, and Samuel Reed, who are both software engineers.

 

Following the collapse of the then-largest cryptocurrency exchange, Mt. Gox, Hayes and his team co-founded BitMEX to provide professional-grade derivatives tools that were seriously lacking in the crypto industry at the time.

 

Despite offering various crypto derivatives, including pioneering perpetual swaps with up to 100x leverage, and becoming one of the most notable derivatives exchanges with no recorded security breaches, BitMEX faced severe regulatory scrutiny from U.S. authorities over alleged anti-money laundering and know-your-customer violations.

 

Due to these regulatory challenges, its founders were charged, and the company was fined more than $100 million. These challenges eventually led BitMEX to lose its market dominance and liquidity, and to several unsuccessful attempts to sell the company.

 

Image credit: pymnts.com

 

Sony Bank, one of Japan's largest online banks, has received conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC, to establish a national trust bank.

 

According to a press release from Sony Bank, the establishment of the trust bank, named Connectia Trust, is intended to prepare for the commercialization of businesses related to the issuance and management of U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins in the United States.

 

"The establishment of this trust subsidiary is intended to contribute to the development of a medium to long-term business foundation for the Sony Financial Group's digital asset businesses," Sony Bank said in a press statement.

 

Although Connectia is being established this month, with Sony Bank committing an initial capital investment of $40 million (equivalent to JPY 6.4 billion), the trust bank will not begin full operations or stablecoin issuance until 2027. That is contingent on receiving final approval from the OCC after meeting all regulatory requirements.

 

Sony Bank's approval comes at a time when several other financial institutions, including crypto companies, have sought to establish national trust banks. In December last year, stablecoin issuer Circle received conditional approval to establish a national trust bank before securing final approval this week. Other companies that have received similar conditional approval include Ripple, Paxos, Fidelity, and BitGo.

 

By seeking an OCC national trust charter, companies can gain greater regulatory clarity and credibility to issue and manage U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins, provide custody services, and operate under a single national regulatory framework that preempts many state licensing requirements. An OCC charter can also help companies build trust among institutional clients, enabling them to expand their services to a broader range of customers.

 

 

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, has re-entered the Philippines after being designated an unregistered exchange and blocked by the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2024.

 

Binance's return to the Philippines was made possible through a regulatory sandbox partnership with BlockShoals Technologies Inc., a Philippine-registered fintech company.

 

Image credit: X.com 

 

Since this is not a fully licensed entry, Binance, under the supervision of the Philippine SEC, will have its infrastructure integrated with BlockShoals for the next 90 days. This will allow the Philippine SEC to monitor Binance's transaction flows, user protection measures, and anti-money laundering controls in a controlled environment before deciding whether to grant broader operating approval.

 

If Binance meets all compliance requirements after the 90-day testing period, the Philippine SEC may grant the exchange a full operating license. As a result, Filipino retail traders may not see Binance-branded services until at least early October, following the completion of the 90-day testing period.

 

Binance's sandbox partnership with BlockShoals comes about two years after the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission, through the National Telecommunications Commission, blocked access to Binance's website and related pages. According to the regulator, Binance was operating without the required license and registration and was offering unregistered securities, which it said posed risks to investors.

 

Crypto adoption in the Philippines appears to remain strong. According to a Chainalysis report, the country ranked ninth in the Global Crypto Adoption Index, down from second place in 2022. The Philippine crypto market is currently valued at about $55 billion and is projected to reach $120 billion by 2034.

 

Binance's Other Sandbox Partnerships

This is not the first time Binance has entered a country through a sandbox partnership. In 2022, Binance formed a joint venture with Gulf Innova, a major subsidiary of Thailand's Gulf Energy Development. The partnership resulted in Gulf Innova's transition into Gulf Binance, enabling Binance to secure a full digital asset exchange and broker license from Thailand's SEC.

 

Binance has also pursued similar sandbox partnerships to enter Dubai and Kazakhstan. It also acquired Sakura Exchange BitCoin, a local Japanese crypto exchange, enabling it to operate in the country without regulatory setbacks.