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After a 15-month review, Germany's financial watchdog has turned down the MiCA licence application of futurum bank AG, the entity behind Bitcoin.de, leaving one of Germany's oldest crypto marketplaces without a clear path back to trading.
FinCEN has withdrawn two long-pending crypto surveillance proposals, a 2023 mixer reporting rule and a 2020 self-hosted wallet rule, as the Trump administration pushes a lighter regulatory touch. The move stands in contrast to the EU, where DAC8 reporting obligations took effect this January.
FinCEN has formally withdrawn a nearly five-year-old proposal that would have forced banks to report and verify identities behind large self-custodied crypto wallet transactions, a move being watched closely in Brussels.
With the EU's MiCA transition period over since July 1, 2026, licensing costs and compliance burdens are consolidating the European crypto industry, as Kriptomat, AscendEX and MEXC's Dutch unit shut down.
Two years into MiCA, Circle has told the European Commission that the regulation's reserve requirements are too rigid, proposing changes to bank deposit ratios, bond concentration limits and counterparty caps.
The EU Commission's consultation on revising MiCA closed on Wednesday, with Circle, Deutsche Börse and others demanding changes to stablecoin reserve requirements, while Berlin-based Greenfield Capital calls for lower hurdles for euro-denominated stablecoins.
More than 50,000 supporters of Stand With Crypto EU have written to the European Commission asking it to lift MiCA's ban on stablecoin interest and rewards, as the European Central Bank pushes to extend the restriction to crypto lending and staking.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 2409, part of an 11-bill anti-corruption package, prohibiting California public employees from issuing their own memecoins in a measure widely read as a rebuke of Donald Trump's crypto ventures.
ESMA chief Verena Ross told the European Parliament the agency is moving from drafting MiCA rules to enforcing them consistently, as ESMA published its 2027 work programme detailing new supervisory tools and priorities.
The European Securities and Markets Authority will direct national regulators to track tokenisation and AI use in investor-facing products, with first reviews already scheduled ahead of the 2027 start date.
The European System of Central Banks wants Brussels to drop MiCA's minimum bank-deposit requirements for stablecoin reserves, proposing liquidity-based rules instead and renewing warnings against so-called multi-issuance stablecoin models.
Frank Schäffler is mobilising a letter-writing campaign against a Finance Ministry draft that would scrap Germany's one-year tax-free holding period for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
A coalition including Nasdaq, Börse Stuttgart and Adan has written to EU lawmakers demanding the DLT Pilot Regime's caps on tokenised securities platforms be abolished or lifted to at least €1.5 trillion, arguing the Commission's €100 billion proposal still falls short.
The UK's Financial Conduct Authority is said to be reconsidering its restriction on retail access to prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi, though the regulator has not confirmed any timeline or scope for changes.
Russia's largest lender expects regulated crypto trading to reach roughly $46 billion in its first year under new legislation, with volumes potentially nearly doubling by 2029, deputy chairman Anatoly Popov says.