Author: Kryptonews

The majority of debanking cases in the US are a result of government pressure, rather than individual banks’ policies, according to a new report from the American think tank the Cato Institute.Cato Institute analyst Nicholas Anthony explained in a report on Thursday that debanking could take several forms: religious or political, the idea that a financial institution closes accounts solely due to political or religious belief or affiliation; operational, when a bank chooses to close a customer’s account as it’s no longer in the bank’s interest; or government, when a government pressures a financial institution to close a customer’s account. “While…

Crypto market turbulence decimated memecoins in particular last year, driving the number of crypto project failures to over 11.6 million in 2025, the highest level recorded for a single year. The fourth quarter of 2025 was among the worst, with 7.7 million tokens listed on GeckoTerminal ceasing active trading during the period, according to a report by CoinGecko research analyst Shaun Paul Lee released on Friday. Lee said the Oct. 10 market crash, which saw over $19 billion of crypto leverage liquidated in a day, was a key catalyst.“This sharp decline in token survivability may be linked to the broader market…

Recent turmoil in Venezuela and Iran has again put the spotlight on the duality of stablecoins, with the US dollar-backed assets such as Tether acting as both a savior for embattled citizens and a tool for blacklisted entities to evade sanctions. Both Venezuela and Iran have been catching headlines at the beginning of 2026 amid political uncertainty and civil unrest. With both facing a host of sanctions, inflation, political instability, and a cost-of-living crisis, crypto and stablecoins have become an important part of the ecosystem. Iran’s stablecoin entanglementIran has seen protests erupt across the country over the past two weeks in response…

South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) is reportedly updating its guidelines to allow corporations to invest in digital assets after a nine-year ban. Listed companies and professional investors will be able to invest up to 5% of their equity capital in crypto assets, reported local news outlet Seoul Economic Daily on Sunday. According to the report, a senior FSC official familiar with the matter said the authorities will “release the final guidelines in January [or] February and allow virtual currency transactions for investment and financial purposes by legal entities.”The move overturns a nine-year ban on corporate crypto investment dating back to 2017,…

Seven senior UK lawmakers have urged Prime Minister Keir Starmer to ban the use of crypto for political donations, arguing the assets help obscure foreign interference.Labour Party MPs who chair various parliamentary committees asked the government in a letter on Sunday to include a ban on crypto donations in an elections bill set to be introduced later this month, according to reports in The Observer and The Guardian.Business and trade committee chair Liam Byrne, one of the letter’s signatories, said that political financing “must be transparent, traceable and enforceable,” arguing that crypto is not.“Crypto can obscure the true source of…

At Sibos Frankfurt, the conversation around blockchain-based payments crossed a clear line. The conversation had shifted from theoretical relevance to practical reality: how stablecoins and programmable money are already in use, and what must still be addressed to operate them safely at scale. At the EEA x EY side event on Stablecoins in Business Payments, leaders from banking, enterprise software, blockchain infrastructure, and regulated wholesale settlement compared notes on what is working today and where the real constraints remain. From “eventually” to “right now” Opening the session, Paul Brody, Global Blockchain Leader at EY and Chairman of the Enterprise Ethereum…

Ripple has secured regulatory approval in the United Kingdom, marking a further step in the company’s push to expand its presence in tightly regulated financial markets. Key Takeaways: Ripple secured FCA registration and EMI authorization, expanding its regulated crypto and payments operations in the UK. The approvals position Ripple to scale payment services as the UK advances a clearer regulatory framework for digital assets. XRP rose modestly following the news, while Ripple also moves forward with US trust bank plans. According to an update published Friday on the regulator’s register, Ripple’s UK subsidiary, Ripple Markets UK Ltd., has been registered…

Key takeaways from the Abu Dhabi Finance Week panel conversation in December. At Abu Dhabi Finance Week 2025, conversations on capital efficiency consistently returned to the same question – whether today’s market infrastructure is actually built to support it. On a panel focused on building the rails for tokenized leverage, Redwan Meslem, Executive Director of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, joined leaders from insurance, clearing, custody, and trading to unpack what’s really standing between tokenized collateral and institutional-scale adoption. The conversation quickly moved past whether tokenization matters, and instead focused on how, where, and under what constraints it could be integrated…

Viewership of crypto content on YouTube has declined to its lowest level since January 2021 following a sharp retreat over the past three months.On Sunday, ITC Crypto founder Benjamin Cowen shared a 30-day moving average of views across various crypto YouTube channels, highlighting the drop. “So it’s not just X and an algorithm change,” he said regarding a similar fall in engagement across crypto channels on microblogging platform X.It has “collapsed across all platforms, and has had a noticeable local decline since just October,” commented crypto YouTuber Tom Crown. “In reality, it’s been in a ‘bear market’ since 2021, having never reached…

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell has blasted the Trump administration over a new criminal probe, arguing it’s the latest attempt to destroy the central bank’s independence on interest rates.Powell said on Sunday that the charges are “a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.”The US attorney for Washington, DC, opened a criminal investigation into Powell on Friday over the agency’s renovation of its headquarters and whether Powell lied to Congress about the size of the project, The New York Times reported…