Cointelegraph

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) urged Turkey to tighten its oversight of crypto markets and adopt dedicated rules for stablecoins.
In a peer review published on Wednesday, the global financial watchdog said Turkish authorities had made progress by introducing registration and licensing requirements for crypto service providers.
The report was part of the FSB’s regular program of country reviews and assessed Turkey’s progress in implementing the board’s 2023 global recommendations on crypto and stablecoins. It followed a broader 2025 review that found gaps in how jurisdictions had implemented those recommendations.
The FSB recommended that Turkey begin monitoring crypto-related risks to financial stability under a formal framework, strengthen supervision and enforcement, and improve cooperation and information sharing with foreign regulators.
Turkey’s Capital Markets Board introduced licensing and operational requirements for crypto exchanges and custodians in March 2025, including minimum capital thresholds.
The FSB said Turkey had introduced safeguards including requirements to segregate assets held in custody and a ban on domestic crypto payments. The safeguards help limit the spread of crypto-related risks to banks and payment systems. Authorities also launched a centralized platform to monitor crypto activities.
The FSB’s 2025 review found that Turkey had finalized rules for crypto assets but lacked a dedicated stablecoin framework.
In June 2025, Turkey’s Finance Ministry outlined plans to introduce additional transaction checks and limits on stablecoin transfers to combat money laundering.

Zcash (ZEC) fell to a two-month low of $962.85 on Wednesday, a day after Grayscale pledged $1 million to nonprofits and projects supporting the Zcash network.
As of 12:20 pm UTC Wednesday, Zcash’s 13.5% drop led 24-hour losses among the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization and was down 24.5% over seven days. The decline was part of a broader crypto sell-off that left Bitcoin (BTC) down 5.8% and Ether (ETH) down 11.6% over the same period, according to CoinGecko.
Crypto prices fell further Tuesday after US consumer prices rose 0.4% in October from the previous month, above economists’ 0.3% forecast.
Zcash lets users send shielded payments that keep sender and recipient addresses and transaction amounts out of public view.
Zcash helped drive this year’s rally in privacy coins, gaining 138% in the 30 days to Sept. 7. It remains the largest privacy coin by market value, accounting for about 60% of the $28 billion category tracked by CoinGecko. The category’s combined market value fell about 7% over 24 hours.
ZEC traded above $1,370 as recently as Friday, when Zcash activated its NU7 upgrade. The upgrade cut the target time between blocks from 75 seconds to 25 to speed up transaction confirmations. It also made about 12,224 ZEC held in the network’s original privacy pool unspendable.
Grayscale converted its Zcash Trust into a US spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) that began trading on NYSE Arca on Aug. 25. The fund recorded about $15 million in net outflows in November through Monday, following about $46 million in October, according to SoSoValue.

Barclays reported holding 3.94 million shares in BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) at the end of the third quarter, up 48% from the previous quarter.
The position in the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) was worth about $187 million on Sept. 30, up from $88.5 million for 2.66 million shares on June 30, according to Barclays’ Friday Form 13F filing.
“Early readings suggest longer-term holders make up a growing share of the spot bitcoin ETF investor base,” Bitwise analyst Camran Khosravi told Cointelegraph, pointing to increased bank exposure, including at Citigroup.
Citigroup reported a new position worth about $119 million in the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC). Its reported IBIT holdings also rose 50% to about 521,000 shares, from 347,000 at the end of June.
The filings offer an early indication of changing institutional Bitcoin ETF ownership, with more major banks and hedge funds yet to disclose their third-quarter positions. Institutional investment managers have until Monday to file their third-quarter holdings reports.
Banks gain ground among Bitcoin ETF holders
Banks accounted for $258 million, or 4.9%, of reported spot Bitcoin ETF holdings among early third-quarter filers, up from $107 million, or 3.2%, in Q2, according to Bitwise data shared with Cointelegraph.
Investment advisers remained the largest holders, accounting for $3.5 billion, or 66.6%, of reported positions, up from $2.2 billion in the previous quarter. Bitwise compared holdings across the two quarters for the 1,389 institutions that had filed their third-quarter reports by Friday. The value of their combined spot Bitcoin ETF holdings rose to $5.25 billion from $3.35 billion.
US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded products (ETP) holdings of early Q3 2026 13F filers. Source: Bitwise
Khosravi said financial advisers at major banks and wealth platforms can now recommend Bitcoin ETFs to clients, a development he expects to become increasingly visible in institutional filings over the coming quarters.
The figures remain preliminary, with major holders including JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and hedge funds Millennium and Schonfeld yet to report their positions ahead of the upcoming deadline.
Price gains lift the value of Bitcoin ETF holdings
Rising Bitcoin ETF valuations do not necessarily reflect fresh institutional buying, according to Jonatan Randin, senior market analyst at PrimeXBT.
“It’s important to look at the holdings in shares and not just the increase in dollar amount,” Randin told Cointelegraph, noting that IBIT gained about 41% in price in Q3.
Separately, an October CoinShares survey found that diversification accounted for 40% of responses on why investors held digital assets, compared with less than 9% for speculation.
Randin cautioned that the filings capture holdings as of Sept. 30, before Bitcoin’s subsequent decline and outflows from spot ETFs. US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded about $6.34 billion in net inflows during the third quarter, followed by roughly $2.1 billion in net outflows in Q4 through Tuesday, according to SoSoValue data.
Magazine: Bitcoin’s ‘best buying opportunity ever’ has arrived: Mark Moss

Kraken parent Payward’s xStocks platform added tokenized versions of more than 200 stocks listed in the United Kingdom and European Union.
Payward said Wednesday that eligible users can trade the new tokens on Kraken and participating xStocks Alliance platforms. The tokens remain unavailable to investors in the UK.
The expansion includes tokenized shares of all 40 companies in Germany’s benchmark DAX index, including SAP, Siemens, Allianz and Deutsche Telekom. According to a separate Wednesday announcement from Deutsche Börse, the tokens are available for trading on its affiliated 360X platform, with 24/7 trading supported on select venues.
Payward said the latest expansion brings xStocks’ offering to more than 1,500 tokenized assets. The company reported more than $45 billion in cumulative transaction volume and over 550,000 unique holders.
According to Payward, the new tokens are backed one-to-one by shares held with a regulated custodian. Kraken’s risk disclosure says xStocks tokens give holders exposure to the shares’ performance without voting rights or legal claims to the underlying stock.
Token Terminal data put xStocks’ market capitalization at $1.1 billion, about 22% of the $4.9 billion in tokenized stocks the firm tracks. xStocks ranked third, behind Binance bStocks at $1.5 billion and Ondo Finance at $1.4 billion.
Payward said it plans to add hundreds of Hong Kong-listed equities in the coming weeks.

Bitcoin (BTC) short-term holders sent more than 47,000 BTC to exchanges on Tuesday as Bitcoin fell to an 11-week low, with the coins worth less than their purchase price.
Key points:
Short-term holders moved 47,025 BTC to exchanges while the coins were worth less than their acquisition price.
The 24-hour total was the third-highest since July, according to CryptoQuant.
CryptoQuant’s Julio Moreno said a sustained break below $73,000 and a failed rebound above that level would strengthen the case that Bitcoin’s broader downtrend was continuing.
Short-term holders’ underwater exchange inflows rank third since July
Data from onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant showed short-term holders sent 47,025 BTC carrying unrealized losses to exchanges in the 24 hours to midnight UTC at the start of Wednesday.
The tally was among the largest 24-hour totals in the four months of data tracked by CryptoQuant and came as Bitcoin dropped to $72,670, its lowest level since Aug. 20.
The short-term holder metric tracks Bitcoin held for up to 155 days. Short-term holders are generally considered more likely to sell when prices fall, even at a loss.
“On November 10, profitable transfers stood near 1,700 BTC, meaning approximately 27 BTC arrived at a loss for every 1 BTC transferred at a profit,” CryptoQuant said.
The largest 24-hour inflows of BTC carrying unrealized losses since late July occurred on Oct. 8, hours after Bitcoin fell back to $80,000. Rolling 24-hour inflows peaked at 50,500 BTC.
Short-term holders’ exchange inflows of BTC carrying unrealized losses. Source: CryptoQuant
CryptoQuant analyst flags $73,000 as Bitcoin tests August lows
Cointelegraph previously reported that short-term holders’ average cost basis was around $75,700.
Short-term holders moved into an aggregate unrealized profit on Aug. 20 as Bitcoin rebounded toward $80,000. They slipped back into an aggregate unrealized loss on Friday.
STH cost basis vs. BTC/USD. Source: CryptoQuant
CryptoQuant head of research Julio Moreno said Bitcoin could still be in the downtrend that began in November 2025.
“If rallies keep stalling near the cohort’s cost basis and net unrealized losses deepen, the August rebound starts to look like a pause in the broader downtrend,” he wrote on Monday.
“A sustained break below $73,000 followed by a failed retest from below would strengthen the case for bear-market continuation.”
STH-NUPL vs. BTC/USD. Source: CryptoQuant
CryptoQuant’s net unrealized profit/loss (NUPL) metric showed that short-term holders reached their highest level of unrealized profitability since November 2025 as Bitcoin climbed to $87,200 in September.

Crypto wallet provider Bitget Wallet said Wednesday it was expanding AI-assisted threat detection after its weekly average of signing requests flagged for potential phishing rose 7.4-fold in the third quarter of 2026.
The wallet flagged about 37,000 such requests per week in Q3, up from 5,000 in Q2, according to Bitget Wallet chief operating officer Alvin Kan.
“The increase likely reflects both greater threat activity and improved detection capabilities, although the data does not allow us to quantify each factor’s contribution,” Kan told Cointelegraph.
The wallet introduced AI-assisted risk detection in Q2, he added.
Kan said that the tally counted flagged signing interactions, not unique attacks or confirmed financial losses.
Bitget Wallet said its expanded AI checks examine website code and domain registration details for signs of fraud. The wallet also simulates transactions to spot hidden permissions before users sign.
Bitget Wallet also said AI helped identify 90% of newly blocked risky domains in October, compared with 36% in Q2. Nearly 70% of domains its AI flagged that month had no matching alerts in the external threat feeds it checked.
The findings come amid continued phishing threats targeting crypto users. In July, a trader lost nearly $1 million after signing a malicious Ethereum token approval.
An August investigation by Rapid7 uncovered a phishing campaign that targeted 885,000 phone numbers and directed recipients to websites impersonating crypto wallet providers.

European Central Bank (ECB) Executive Board member Piero Cipollone called for European Union negotiators to reach a deal on digital euro legislation by year-end to keep a possible 2029 launch on track.
Speaking at the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs on Tuesday, Cipollone said adoption of the regulation, part of the EU’s Single Currency Package, would give the ECB the legal certainty it needs to complete preparations.
“A delay in adoption could instead postpone the introduction of the digital euro,” Cipollone said, warning that a later launch could deepen Europe’s dependence on foreign payment providers and make it harder for European companies to compete.
The ECB aims to be ready for a potential first issuance in 2029 if the EU adopts the regulation this year. Its Governing Council will decide whether and when to issue the digital euro after the legislation passes.
The European Parliament’s economic affairs committee approved its position on the digital euro legislation in June in a 43–14 vote. Parliament adopted its negotiating position in July, clearing the way for talks with EU member states.
The ECB is preparing a 12-month pilot set to begin in the second half of 2027. Payment providers and selected merchants will test a beta version of the digital euro.
The warning comes as the ECB prepares for a leadership change. President Christine Lagarde announced in October that she would step down on Feb. 7, 2027, ahead of the planned pilot.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded $95 million in net outflows on Tuesday as investors poured billions of dollars into stock funds during a market pullback.
Tuesday’s withdrawals brought net outflows from US spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs to roughly $1.6 billion since the start of November, according to SoSoValue data.
Bitcoin ETF outflows eased for a third straight session, while stock funds accounted for all 17 of the top US-listed ETFs by inflows over five trading sessions, according to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.
Equity ETF investors “devoured” the dip
US-listed ETFs attracted roughly $12 billion per day over those five sessions, with all 17 of the top funds by inflows investing in equities, Balchunas said on X on Tuesday.
The biggest beneficiaries included Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF (VOO), Invesco’s Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ) and BlackRock’s iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV).
US-listed ETFs ranked by one-week net inflows, led by equity funds. Source: Eric Balchunas
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) recorded $78 million in net withdrawals Tuesday, its eighth straight trading session of outflows. The fund recorded about $1.73 billion in net outflows over the streak, according to Farside Investors.
Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin Trust ETF (MSBT) attracted $20 million Tuesday, although the inflows were insufficient to offset broader losses.
Bitcoin demand weakens as ETF outflows ease
Daily net outflows from Bitcoin ETFs outflows slowed from $430 million Thursday and $412 million Friday to $201 million Monday and $95 million Tuesday, but broader market indicators remained weak, according to CryptoQuant.
CryptoQuant’s Bitcoin Bull Score Index dropped to 20 on Monday from 90 on Oct. 13, signaling “extremely bearish” conditions, according to a Tuesday report seen by Cointelegraph.
The analysts reported that apparent Bitcoin demand contracted by 284,000 BTC over 30 days, the fastest pace since March 2025. CryptoQuant said similar conditions have preceded local market bottoms but warned that a deeper correction remains possible, identifying $73,200 as a key Bitcoin support level.
At publishing time, Bitcoin traded at $73,998, down 1% over the past 24 hours, and down 5.2% over the past seven days, according to CoinGecko.
Magazine: Bitcoin’s ‘best buying opportunity ever’ has arrived: Mark Moss

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed 348 enforcement actions in fiscal 2026, down 23.7% from 456 a year earlier.
Its annual enforcement results included cases involving alleged crypto fraud and failures in FTX’s audits.
In its Tuesday release, the SEC said it had charged three purported crypto trading platforms and four investment clubs in an alleged scheme that defrauded investors of at least $14 million. In a separate case, the agency accused the founder of a Bitcoin mining business of misappropriating $48.5 million after raising more than $95.6 million from about 6,400 investors.
In April, the SEC settled charges against Francis Decker, the Prager Metis partner who led FTX’s audits, over failures to meet professional auditing standards.
In February, a jury found Ismael Zarco Sanchez liable for securities fraud and registration violations over his role in the $300 million CryptoFX Ponzi scheme. In July, a court ordered Michael Noble to pay $1.07 million in a case over his role promoting BitConnect’s crypto lending program.
Fiscal 2026 was SEC Chair Paul Atkins’ first full fiscal year in office. The 348 enforcement actions were the agency’s fewest since 1991, according to a Reuters review of SEC records. Standalone actions fell to 235 from 303 a year earlier.
The decline in crypto enforcement was already visible in 2025, when the SEC filed 13 crypto-related actions, down from 33 in 2024, according to Cornerstone Research. Five of the 13 were filed before former Chair Gary Gensler left office in January 2025.
The SEC said its new enforcement analytics office was using “blockchain and financial-flow analysis” to detect potential misconduct earlier.

Layer-1 blockchain network Initia confirmed Wednesday that it has suffered its second security exploit in less than three weeks, with an attacker stealing about $3.27 million in crypto assets after compromising the platform’s cloud infrastructure.
On Wednesday, Initia said the attacker gained unauthorized access on Monday through a command injection attack involving a compromised Google Cloud Platform key. The company said the breach exposed environment variables, allowing the attacker to access Initia’s GitHub and cloud accounts and obtain additional credentials.
According to Initia, the attacker accessed Anvil, a platform hosting rollups, and validated fraudulent Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) withdrawals from five rollups, releasing assets held in the network’s escrow accounts.
Initia said about $2.16 million of the stolen assets remain frozen on its halted network. The attacker sold assets on Initia’s decentralized exchange and withdrew 13,400 TIA, 8,000 USDC.inj and 597,000 Noble USDC. No INIT tokens were withdrawn.
Initia halted its layer-1 on Tuesday and said it intends to restore the backing of affected assets. The blockchain said recovery efforts are ongoing with its law enforcement and security partners.
The incident follows an Oct. 23 exploit that saw an attacker drain about $2.7 million after exploiting a vulnerability in Initia’s MoveVM script cache. This allowed malicious code to bypass security checks and create unbacked token balances that were subsequently bridged out of the network.

Cross-chain bridge Across Protocol said it has regained control of its website after a social engineering attack on Tuesday enabled attackers to gain control of its domain, replacing its website with a phishing site.
In a post on Wednesday, Across said the across.to domain is back under their control with help from Namecheap founder Richard Kirkendall, and that all systems are now working normally.
“All affected users will be made whole. We’ll share a full post-mortem in the coming days,” the team said on X.
The update follows Across’s Tuesday warning to users to avoid its app amid reports of drained wallets. The total losses and number of affected users have not yet been disclosed.
Across attributes takeover to social engineering
In an earlier update, Across said a social engineering attack on its domain registrar, Namecheap, gave an attacker control of its domain at approximately 18:45 UTC.
The team said it was alerted within 15 minutes and immediately worked to shut the website down. Security response group SEAL911 helped flag the domain as phishing with major wallets, while Cloudflare marked it as at risk and later removed its DNS records.
Some users who visited the domain before the malicious site was fully blocked may have been affected, the team said. Third-party integrations and API users were unaffected.
The incident affected one of the largest cross-chain bridges by trading activity. Across ranked third by 30-day transfer volume, behind Circle and LayerZero, according to DefiLlama, having processed about $5.9 billion over the period.

Pro-crypto US Representative Tom Emmer has been elected House Republican minority whip, securing the party’s second-highest leadership position as Democrats prepare to take control of Congress in January.
Emmer beat Texas Representative August Pfluger in a 103-76 secret ballot vote, according to Politico. He previously served as House Republican majority whip and will remain the party’s No. 2 leader, this time under incoming Minority Leader Jim Jordan.
As minority whip, Emmer will be responsible for rallying Republican votes, coordinating the party’s legislative strategy and helping maintain unity on key bills.
Emmer has been a leading Republican voice on digital assets. In March 2025, he and Representative Ritchie Torres announced the bipartisan Congressional Crypto Caucus, aimed at mobilizing support for digital asset legislation, including stablecoin and market structure bills.
He is also an original cosponsor of the CLARITY Act and introduced the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, which seeks to clarify that blockchain developers and infrastructure providers who do not control customer funds are not money transmitters under federal law.
“Tom has been one of the strongest advocates for digital assets in Congress, and he has led the fight against a government-controlled CBDC and stood up for American innovators,” GOP Senator Cynthia Lummis said on X.

Bitcoin Lightning wallet platform LNbits has urged users to update immediately to its latest version after reporting a wave of attacks targeting LNbits instances that resulted in stolen funds.
The project published version 1.7.0 on Tuesday, describing it as a critical release addressing vulnerabilities and strengthening authentication, extension management and payment handling. LNbits warned that updating alone would not protect installations whose credentials had already been compromised.
“It’s been a very challenging few days, working relentlessly to get the v1.7 release out after our users and we suffered losses,” LNbits creator Ben Arc said on X.
LNbits provides software for running Bitcoin Lightning wallets and payment applications, including merchant checkouts, tipping services and paywalls. Developer Ben Arc said in May that about 200,000 people run the software themselves.
LNbits first warned operators on Sunday to disable its Paywall extension while it investigated a potential vulnerability. Just over an hour later, the project urged users to shut down their LNbits servers immediately, citing a wave of attacks. It also took its own hosted installations offline.
The company has not yet detailed the exploit and how many were impacted by it. In an announcement accompanying the emergency patch, LNbits said the vulnerability affects all versions before 1.7.0 and puts funds at risk of theft.
It also warned that credentials exposed before upgrading could still give attackers access afterward, urging operators to reset wallet keys, replace funding-source credentials and treat secrets stored in LNbits settings as compromised and recommended moving to a fresh server if a compromise is suspected.
Cointelegraph reached out to Ben Arc and LNbits for comment.
One user, Kevin Ravensberg, said attackers exploited his LNbits instance, withdrawing about 2.3 million satoshis, or 0.023 Bitcoin, through newly created accounts before he could shut down the server.
The company said a separate report detailing the exploit would follow.
Magazine: Bitcoin’s ‘best buying opportunity ever’ has arrived: Mark Moss

Prediction markets operator Kalshi is being warned of imminent charges from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission over whether the operator properly notified the agency about new products, Politico reported Tuesday.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating notifications involving dozens of products, the report said, citing a person with direct knowledge of the probe. The agency’s private notification to Kalshi suggests that charges could follow.
The investigation has been underway for months, the person said.
Speaking to Politico, Kalshi spokesperson Elisabeth Diana described the matter as a procedural error involving submissions for a handful of contracts, many of which never went live.
“We are already addressing the issue,” she added.
The potential enforcement action comes as the CFTC fights to establish its exclusive authority over prediction markets, including by challenging state efforts to regulate Kalshi.
Separately, Kalshi is backing the regulator in a separate legal battle over its authority. On Monday, the company joined Coinbase and four other firms in seeking permission to file a brief supporting the CFTC’s treatment of perpetual futures tied to individual US stocks.

A consortium of 21 financial institutions has committed about $270 million in funding to a stablecoin initiative known as Project Faro. The project, backed by big banks, aims to act as a stablecoin issuer and launch a US dollar stablecoin in the first half of 2027.
According to Bloomberg, the funding is intended to cover five years of operations for the new company, which plans to issue stablecoins pegged to the currencies of all G7 countries, with a euro-backed coin expected to follow the dollar launch.
The group first announced the initiative in September. While confirmed details are thin, people familiar with the matter said the company is expected to be incorporated in the US, Bloomberg reported.
The group includes banks such as Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Banco Santander, Deutsche Bank and BBVA. Similar initiatives are also underway, including Stripe-led Open USD, which counts Visa among its founding partners, and Qivalis, a European banking consortium seeking to challenge the dominance of US dollar-pegged stablecoins.
Overlap with rival consortiums
BBVA is one of several Faro members also involved in competing stablecoin initiatives, including Open USD and Qivalis. Dutch lender Rabobank is also a Faro member and joined Qivalis in May, when the euro consortium added 25 banks to reach 37 members. BNP Paribas was among the 10 banks that first explored what became Faro in October 2025 and later joined Qivalis.
Qivalis has since made progress on the regulatory front, receiving authorization from the Dutch central bank as an electronic money institution in October 2026. The consortium is preparing to launch a fully regulated, euro-denominated stablecoin, with plans to make it available for payments, cross-border settlements and tokenized asset transactions.
The overlap highlights how traditional financial institutions are positioning themselves across multiple initiatives rather than committing exclusively to a single stablecoin issuance project.
By participating in competing projects, banks can explore different approaches to issuing and distributing digital currencies while retaining a stake in the infrastructure that could underpin future payment and settlement systems.
A crowded room
Despite the growing institutional interest, Faro is entering a market dominated by two crypto-native issuers.
Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC account for approximately 85% of the roughly $290 billion stablecoin market as of Nov. 10, according to DefiLlama. USDT had a market capitalization of approximately $176.3 billion, while USDC accounted for around $70.4 billion.
Distribution could, however, offer the bank-backed venture a competitive advantage. Faro’s participating institutions already have established banking customers, payment networks and relationships with businesses and financial institutions that could help distribute a new stablecoin.
Rather than building an entirely new customer base, the consortium could leverage those existing relationships to introduce its stablecoin to new audiences, including retail users. Open USD, developed by the Open Standard consortium, is pursuing a similar approach by bringing together payment providers, banks, financial technology companies and merchants around a shared stablecoin infrastructure.
The challenge for both will be translating their existing financial infrastructure and customer relationships into a competitive onchain payment network.
Magazine: Wall Street killed Bitcoin’s wild rallies: 10x’s Markus Thielen

Traditional finance is moving past one-size-fits-all blockchains, according to John Nahas, chief business officer at Ava Labs, the company behind the Avalanche network.
Nahas told Cointelegraph that the planned NYSE-affiliated tokenized securities platform, which will use Avalanche technology for clearing and settlement, illustrates that financial institutions want more control over how their blockchains operate.
“Capital markets need reliable performance and predictable cost settlement, certainty and control over the network and its participants,” he said. “It’s really important for this chain to be purpose built for the needs of NYSE.”
Nahas argued that the crypto industry’s preference for general-purpose blockchains and its reluctance to adapt to the compliance rules financial institutions face have slowed adoption.
“Crypto always wants to put the crypto part front and center,” Nahas said. He sees a shift toward blockchains designed for specific use cases. “I look at this as the end of the general purpose era,” he said.
Adjusting to institutional needs
The NYSE move, announced on Monday, comes as more companies object to third parties tokenizing their shares for trading on OKXICE, a separate venue proposed by crypto exchange OKX and NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). OKXICE listed 67 companies that had objected as of Nov. 5, including Apple, Amazon, Meta and Tesla.
Nahas put the pushback down partly to a lack of understanding among incumbents, who he said see crypto as a speculative “wild west.” He said a “wholesale change” to market infrastructure built around institutions’ needs would make the potential efficiency gains clearer and expected objecting companies would “come around.”
Dennis Lee, the NYSE’s head of digital issuance, said the exchange will be “picking the right technology for each job,” as its develops the platform.
Although the NYSE-affiliated platform will support equities issued on a variety of blockchains, the settlement ledger had to allow the exchange to “control who can take part and keep costs predictable,” both elements Lee said Avalanche met. On public blockchains, such as Ethereum, institutions can restrict access to their own applications, while the underlying networks remain open. Congestion can also drive up transaction fees.
The NYSE spent a year testing Avalanche, giving Ava Labs time to tailor its approach to the exchange’s needs, Nahas said.
“The problem is general purpose chains don’t want to or most of the time cannot adapt to the existing frameworks,” he said.
Resilience to changing landscape
Nahas said the ability to adapt matters most when regulations are still taking shape. “Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of a line that didn’t exist the day before,” he said. In his view, building around the rules financial institutions already follow can help projects move forward while regulators clarify how those rules apply to crypto.
Asked what the “blue wave” in the House and Senate could mean for the US crypto industry, Nahas said he remained optimistic. “The landscape has changed, but the underlying fact is that this train has left the station,” he said. “You see that today in a big way.”
Magazine: What Democrats’ US midterm sweep means for the CLARITY Act

Crypto companies are moving deeper into financial services traditionally dominated by banks, seeking a role in US derivatives settlements, where billions of dollars change hands daily.
The push comes as regulators expand the services trust companies can provide, even as traditional banking groups challenge parts of the regulatory framework governing crypto firms’ expansion into banklike activities.
A Nov. 5 decision by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) illustrates the shift, allowing derivatives clearinghouses to use trust companies for daily settlements with clearing members, a function previously restricted to banks under the agency’s regulations.
The relief could create new business opportunities for regulated crypto custodians, but its revocable nature and changes in the US political landscape raise questions about the durability of the regulatory opening.
Crypto firms eye billions in daily derivatives settlements
The scale of the derivatives settlement business offers some perspective on the opportunity.
CME Group, one of the world’s largest derivatives market operators, transferred an average of $8.7 billion per business day through its clearing systems during the first half of 2026, up from $6.7 billion a day in 2025, according to regulatory filings.
Those figures represent funds transferred between clearing firms to settle gains and losses, rather than fees earned by settlement banks. They nevertheless illustrate the scale of financial flows supported by the infrastructure that trust companies could increasingly help provide.
The CFTC’s Division of Clearing and Risk issued no-action relief on Nov. 5 following an Oct. 29 request from derivatives clearinghouse Nodal Clear, allowing clearinghouses to use trust companies for daily settlements if they meet the same evaluation and monitoring requirements applied to traditional settlement banks.
The decision addresses an inconsistency between federal commodities law, which permits customer funds to be held at banks or trust companies, and CFTC Regulation 39.14, which defines settlement banks only as banks.
Nodal Clear partnered with Coinbase in 2025 to integrate USDC into US futures trading. Coinbase Custody Trust was already expected to provide daily settlement services under the arrangement, Cointelegraph has learned.
Other crypto firms have also expanded their institutional financial services. On Nov. 4, BitGo launched its Global Markets division, combining derivatives trading, financing, collateral management and settlement capabilities.
Coinbase’s national trust bank charter also took effect on Nov. 6, allowing Coinbase National Trust Company, a separate entity from Coinbase Custody Trust, to provide federally supervised digital asset custody services.
Several major crypto firms have also secured US national trust bank approvals over the past months, including Circle, Ripple, Crypto.com and Stripe-owned Bridge. The charters, granted by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), reflect the industry’s expansion into federally regulated financial services.
Traditional banks contest crypto firms’ expanding role
The expansion of specialized trust companies has prompted objections from traditional banking groups.
In October, the Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC, arguing that its national trust bank charter rules could allow crypto firms to conduct certain banklike activities without meeting all the requirements imposed on conventional banks.
The lawsuit reflects a broader disagreement over how specialized financial institutions should be regulated as they expand into services also provided by banks.
Cody Carbone, CEO of The Digital Chamber, told Cointelegraph that the CFTC’s relief does not put trust companies in a better or worse position than traditional banks.
Trust companies and banks already compete for services permitted under their respective charters, Carbone said, adding that the decision gives clearinghouses more options without preventing banks from retaining their business. “A trust company charter is not a regulatory shortcut,” he said.
Revocable relief faces a changing regulatory landscape
Despite the potential opportunities, the CFTC’s decision leaves questions about how securely trust companies can establish a long-term role in derivatives settlement.
The agency issued a no-action letter rather than formally amending its regulations. The letter states that CFTC staff will not recommend enforcement action against clearinghouses using trust companies for daily settlements if specified conditions are met.
Unlike a formal rule amendment, which generally requires a public notice-and-comment process, staff no-action relief does not change the underlying regulation and can be withdrawn.
“A change in Commission leadership could withdraw the CFTC Letter. More formal Commission action, such as amending the regulation, would be necessary to avoid this potential risk,” Jordan Yeagley, a shareholder at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, told Cointelegraph.
The uncertainty comes at a politically significant moment for the agency. CFTC Chair Michael Selig remains the regulator’s sole commissioner, despite a statutory structure providing for five commissioners. Selig has led the agency since December 2025, leaving four seats vacant as the regulator expands its work on digital asset markets.
The political environment is also changing following the Nov. 3 US midterm elections, in which Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress.
The incoming Congress, which takes office in January, will have greater power to scrutinize the CFTC’s regulatory agenda. The Senate also has a role in confirming nominees to fill the agency’s vacant commissioner seats, while the House and Senate Agriculture Committees oversee the regulator.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, who won Ohio’s Senate race on Nov. 3 despite more than $60 million in opposition spending from crypto-backed political action committees, could take on a prominent role on the Senate Agriculture Committee.
Magazine: What Democrats’ US midterm sweep means for the CLARITY Act

Crosschain bridging protocol Across, which allows users to transfer digital assets between Ethereum and other blockchain networks, warned users Tuesday not to access its app or connect their wallets while it investigates a potential security incident.
In a Tuesday X post, Across advised users against signing transactions or approvals until further notice, without specifying the nature of the incident or whether its website had been compromised.
Source: Across Protocol
On X, one user claimed to have lost $9,000 in USDC, while another reported losing 7,053 USDT0 across seven transactions on the Plasma blockchain.
A third user said their wallet was drained after using the bridge several times, alleging that the website had been compromised. Across asked the users for transaction details to investigate their reports.
Cointelegraph has not independently verified the reports. Across Protocol did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for more details.
Across Protocol responds to user reporting $9,000 USDC loss. Source: X user bilm01
NEAR AI discloses separate security breach
In a separate security incident, NEAR AI disclosed Monday that attackers exploited a vulnerability in its AI infrastructure, exposing account details belonging to approximately 100 users and data from 18 AI agents.
According to a Nov. 9 incident report, attackers exploited a remote code execution vulnerability in SGLang, an open-source AI inference engine, to gain access to an internal server and other infrastructure. The compromised data included user names, email addresses, agent chat histories, settings and logs, while two customers had API keys exposed.
NEAR AI said attackers may also have observed requests processed on the compromised server, including those running in confidential mode. The company said it had patched the vulnerability, revoked exposed credentials and restored access to its cloud services.
Magazine: Vitalik ‘pivots’ ETH to store of value, crypto suffers after US midterms: Hodler’s Digest

Wall Street’s embrace of Bitcoin has created the “best buying opportunity ever,” according to investor Mark Moss.
Moss co-founded the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund, where he is an advisory partner. In 2025, UK-listed Satsuma Technology appointed him chief Bitcoin strategist.
Moss tells Cointelegraph on the latest episode of Trade Secrets that he first bought Bitcoin in 2015 at about $300, during a recovery from a $1,000 to $200 plunge.
“It was so risky,” Moss recalls of buying back then. In contrast, today, “you have consensus from the US government and Wall Street.”
“But most people still think it’s a scam,” he says.
That skepticism opens buying opportunities as Bitcoin starts to cross what Moss calls the “chasm” between early adopters and mainstream investors. Banks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have made Bitcoin easier to buy and financial advisers could help persuade clients who have stayed away previously to consider investing.
Moss calls bottom but Bitcoin keeps falling
Bitcoin briefly climbed above $80,000 after the Democrats took control of the US Congress in the midterm elections, then gave back those gains as tech stocks sold off. By Friday, it fell to $74,762, its lowest level since August and remains in the doldrums at the time of writing.
Despite the selloff, Moss points to the reaction to the $6.3 billion Binance hack as a sign that sellers were running out.
“The price didn’t really drop,” he says.
Bitcoin fell to $76,320 after the breach and slid to $74,762 on Friday, erasing its post-election gains. It fell further to about $73,500 late Sunday, its lowest level since August, after Nvidia’s board announced it would investigate reports that CEO Jensen Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort.
Bitcoin found another bottom after reports of Nvidia CEO’s scandal. Source: CoinMarketCap
Flows into US spot Bitcoin ETFs swung sharply during election week. The funds took in about $75 million on Wednesday, then shed $430 million on Thursday.
History is on the side of hodlers however. Bitcoin gained an average of about 53% in the 12 months after previous US midterms, Moss says, using data going back to 2014. That leaves three completed election cycles in his sample. He says he expects Bitcoin to set a new all-time high in 2027.
Moss backs Strategy but would keep his Bitcoin
Moss thinks the Bitcoin treasury company to own is Strategy (MSTR), but believes that holding Bitcoin yourself is still superior. Strategy began buying Bitcoin in 2020 and turned those purchases into a core part of its business. It has used stock and debt sales to fund its purchases, giving investors a way to bet on Bitcoin through a publicly traded company.
By Nov. 2, Strategy held 849,327 BTC, more than 4% of Bitcoin’s maximum supply.
“I don’t think there’s another publicly traded company that will outperform Strategy over the next ten years,” Moss says.
Strategy has the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin trove. Source: BitcoinTreasuries.Net
Leverage can help a Bitcoin treasury company’s shares outperform the cryptocurrency it holds when its price rises.
But even if Strategy outperforms, Moss wouldn’t trade his Bitcoin holdings for its shares.
Before Moss bought his first Bitcoin, he made a living buying foreclosed properties, fixing them up and selling them. He moved into property development, then built and sold a medical equipment business. He says he put the proceeds into Southern California real estate.
When the market crashed in 2008, he lost it all.
“The reward of being right is not worth the risk of getting it wrong,” he says.
Even with his outlook for Strategy, Moss says he’d keep his Bitcoin and use only a small share of his portfolio to pursue higher returns through treasury stocks.
A journey of $1 million Bitcoin starts with small allocations
In Moss’s model, Bitcoin could reach $1 million under certain circumstances, when it competes with stocks, bonds, gold and real estate for a considerable share of investors’ wealth. The model estimates how much those assets are worth, projects how that pool could grow as the global money supply expands and calculates a Bitcoin price based on the share it captures.
Financial advisers could help bring in that money via one client’s portfolio at a time, encouraging them to shift a few percentage points out of stocks or bonds and into Bitcoin. The scenario depends on a critical mass of clients doing that, to the point where all those small allocations add up.
The model also assumes Bitcoin stays secure and decentralized. Asked what could derail the scenario, Moss pointed to a failure that compromised either feature.
Moss says $1 million is possible by 2030... though hodler’s might have to wait until 2032.
Hodler’s Digest: Vitalik ‘pivots’ ETH to store of value, crypto suffers after US midterms

Kimber Digital Securities, an affiliate of blockchain network Plume, said Tuesday it had registered as a broker-dealer with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and joined the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
In its announcement, the company said it plans to offer tokenized US stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and bonds that investors could hold in self-custodial wallets. The company gave no launch date.
Tokenized stocks are digital tokens that represent company shares or rights tied to those shares. Transfers of the tokens are recorded on a blockchain. The rights investors receive depend on how the tokens are structured.
Unlike wrapped securities, the proposed tokens would represent existing ownership rights recorded through the Depository Trust Company (DTC). The company said investors would retain their dividend and voting rights and could transfer eligible holdings between traditional brokerage accounts and onchain wallets.
The company also plans to offer yield-bearing investment products to stablecoin users, including tokenized shares in funds managed by major US asset managers.
Tokenized stock market surges sixfold as exchanges prepare for 24/7 trading
Kimber’s registration comes as other companies prepare to launch around-the-clock trading of tokenized US securities. On Monday, Formation Securities announced plans for a Solana-based trading venue offering tokenized shares of Galaxy Digital, Exodus Movement and Forward Industries, with a launch targeted for early 2027.
Major US exchange operators are pursuing similar initiatives ahead of 2027. The New York Stock Exchange is developing a 24/7 tokenized securities platform using Avalanche for settlement, while Nasdaq is targeting the second quarter of 2027 for its tokenized equity initiative with Kraken’s parent, Payward.
The value of tokenized stocks onchain has surged more than sixfold over the past year, rising to $3.87 billion from $643.3 million in November 2025.
Tokenized stocks. Source: RWA.xyz
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