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The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has released the final draft of the crypto asset framework. This new regulation is set to bring most crypto activities under the regulation of the Financial Services and Markets Act by October 25, 2027.According to the proposal, any institution that holds customer crypto assets for more than 24 hours or has the ability to revoke customer permissions will be considered a regulated custodian and must hold a full safeguarding license. Validators and node operators that provide value-added features such as yield or reward reinvestment will lose their technical exemptions. In addition, stablecoin issuers within the UK must control the entire lifecycle from issuance to redemption. Relevant institutions must submit authorization applications between September 30, 2026, and February 28, 2027.

According to official news, the scalable blockchain network AO based on Arweave has announced the launch of the "Network Availability Staking Alpha (NASA)" testing program, which is a key step in its AO ecosystem aimed at enhancing the availability and reliability of decentralized data networks through a staking mechanism. The program is currently in the Alpha stage, and users can participate in network availability verification and earn rewards by providing data services for Arweave gateways and staking AO tokens.In the first pilot phase, AO introduces the "availability staking" mechanism, requiring node operators to stake 25 AO to participate in the network and compete for the speed and stability of responding to user requests. The system will allocate rewards from a monthly reward pool of 1000 AO based on the performance of nodes in data services. This mechanism relies on the next-generation HyperBEAM architecture, enabling higher levels of verifiability and trustlessness for gateway and routing services while significantly reducing operational costs.The project team stated that NASA aims to establish a stronger decentralized economic model for the entire permanent network infrastructure, paving the way for future expansion into areas such as computing scheduling, data indexing, and network services. Although the current reward scale is small and still in the testing phase, the program is seen as an important starting point for the AO-Core economic system and will gradually expand to more network infrastructure services in the future.

According to Cointelegraph, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced that it is seeking industry feedback on guidance for the future regulatory framework for crypto assets in the UK, aimed at facilitating the implementation of a comprehensive regulatory framework that will take effect on October 25, 2027.According to the announcement, this consultation will last until June 3, 2026, and aims to help businesses understand the impact of the new regulations on their operations, providing compliance guidance for key areas such as stablecoin issuance, crypto trading, custody, and staking.The FCA stated that it hopes to establish a "competitive and sustainable" crypto market, allowing compliant institutions to better serve UK users. The FCA also disclosed that the application process for relevant crypto business licenses is expected to open in September 2026 and continue until February 2027.All institutions providing crypto asset services will need to obtain authorization under the Financial Services and Markets Act (FSMA) in the future, and previous registration under anti-money laundering frameworks will not automatically exempt them. This guidance consultation is seen as an important step in the UK's gradual improvement of its crypto regulatory system, marking an accelerated transition from partial regulation to a comprehensive licensing system.

The digital asset trading platform Gate will launch the Pre-IPOs first project SpaceX (SPCX) and simultaneously introduce an airdrop incentive program for high-level users and super agents.The subscription period for the SpaceX (SPCX) project is from April 20, 2026, 18:00 to April 22, 2026, 18:00 (UTC+8), with a total subscription amount of 33,900 SPCX, valued at approximately 20.01 million USD. The project supports subscriptions in USDT and GUSD, and after the subscription is completed, it will enter pre-market trading with 100% unlocked.At the same time, the platform will launch a VIP-exclusive airdrop event, distributing SPCX asset certificates to users above VIP 5 and super agents. The event will run from April 15, 2026, 18:00 to April 22, 2026, 18:00 (UTC+8). Users must meet conditions such as registration and net recharge to participate. Rewards will be distributed in tiers based on VIP levels and will be distributed uniformly after the subscription ends. Additionally, eligible super agents will also receive a fixed amount of SPCX airdrop.

According to official news, the Ethereum Foundation has launched the Ethereum Audit Subsidy Program, a collaborative project initiated with audit service providers, aimed at subsidizing the costs of security audits for Ethereum developers.Security audits are industry best practices, but they can be expensive. The goal of this subsidy program is to make audits more affordable, thereby enhancing the security of the entire Ethereum ecosystem. Under the Ethereum Foundation's "Trillion Dollar Security Program," this project collaborates with organizations such as Areta, Nethermind, and Chainlink Labs to review applications, helping developers building CROPS and new use cases on Ethereum to obtain more affordable audit services.

JPMorgan CFO Jeremy Barnum stated during the earnings call that if regulatory rules are not aligned with traditional bank deposits, stablecoins may evolve into a "regulatory arbitrage" tool. He pointed out that some stablecoin models already exhibit deposit-like characteristics, such as providing incentives similar to yields, but are not subject to banking regulatory requirements like capital, liquidity, and consumer protection, which could create an unfair competitive environment. "If the same products are not regulated equally, it will open up arbitrage opportunities," Barnum said.Currently, U.S. legislation is pushing for a cryptocurrency regulatory framework, including the Clarity Act, to clarify the regulatory division of labor between the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and to regulate the development of the stablecoin market. Additionally, whether to allow stablecoins to distribute reserve earnings to users has become a point of contention. Cryptocurrency companies, including Coinbase, support "interest-bearing stablecoins," while banks believe this would bring them closer to deposit products but lack corresponding regulatory constraints. JPMorgan expressed support for regulatory clarity but emphasized that "regulatory consistency" takes precedence over speed. At the same time, the bank is advancing product layouts, including JPM Coin and tokenized deposits, through its blockchain division Kinexys to modernize the payment system.

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced that it has initiated a compensation program for victims of the OneCoin cryptocurrency fraud case, with over $40 million in forfeited assets available for payout.The program is aimed at investors who purchased OneCoin and incurred net losses between 2014 and 2019. U.S. prosecutors stated that this move is intended to return some of the illicit proceeds to the victims. OneCoin was initiated by Ruja Ignatova and Karl Greenwood, with the related fraud exceeding $4 billion. Ignatova has been missing since 2017, and Greenwood was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2023.

The prediction market platform Polymarket has launched a bug bounty program on the Cantina platform with a maximum reward of $5 million. The program covers the entire technology stack, including 18 smart contracts on Polygon (V1/V2 CTFExchange and NegRisk versions, fee modules, conditional token frameworks, pUSD collateral wrapping/unwrapping systems, UMA oracle adapter, etc.), web applications, and related infrastructure (key web vulnerabilities such as remote code execution, sensitive data leakage, subdomain takeover involving wallet interaction, and malicious transaction injection are all eligible for the highest reward level).The maximum reward for smart contract-related vulnerabilities is $5 million, while the maximum reward for web application-related vulnerabilities is $250,000. The program is now officially open for submissions.

According to the "News" report, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) recently arrested three Telegram investment channel owners, accusing them of manipulating stock prices through a "Pump&Dump" strategy, involving over 55,000 illegal transactions related to 19 large companies on the Moscow Exchange.Research from Moscow State University shows that 11% of Telegram investment signals can have a substantial impact on stock returns, with over 60% of private investors relying on such signals to make decisions. The Central Bank of Russia stated that it will continue to monitor abnormal trading and warned that "punishment is inevitable" for illegal bloggers. Experts remind that manipulative signals are often presented in emotional language, promise quick profits, and do not disclose risks; investors should prioritize consulting licensed advisors.

According to Cointelegraph, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov called WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption a "huge consumer fraud." He pointed out that about 95% of private messages ultimately end up stored in unencrypted backups on Apple and Google servers.Durov believes that this situation puts users' privacy at risk. Although WhatsApp claims that its message transmission process uses end-to-end encryption, the actual backup mechanism fails to ensure the complete encryption of user information. This statement has raised industry concerns about the privacy protection measures of mainstream messaging applications.

According to L2BEAT analysis, users of the Ethereum Layer 2 network Scroll were overcharged more than $50,000 in transaction fees within about four days last week. The reason is that the Scroll team manually adjusted two rate multipliers in their Gas price oracle six times within six days, increasing each by 2 to 10 times, cumulatively raising the L1 data cost parameter to 1,280 times the original benchmark.Approximately 139,000 affected transactions originally had a total cost of only about $280, but were actually charged over $50,000, with automated bots accounting for the vast majority. L2BEAT pointed out that the overcharging was not an issue with the sequencer, but rather stemmed from the team's multiplier adjustments executed through a multi-signature wallet. This incident has raised questions about whether Scroll had previously subsidized users with rates below cost to maintain activity. According to DeFiLlama data, Scroll currently has a TVL of only $24 million, down 96% from its peak of $585 million in October 2024. As of the time of publication, Scroll has not publicly responded.

The Office of Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection (OCCIP) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced a new initiative today aimed at strengthening cybersecurity in the digital asset industry.This initiative will provide timely, actionable cybersecurity information to eligible U.S. digital asset companies and industry organizations, helping them better identify, prevent, and respond to cyber threats targeting their customers and networks. This action implements an important recommendation from the President's Working Group on Financial Markets in the report "Enhancing the U.S. Leadership in Digital Financial Technology."

Telegram founder Pavel Durov stated that The Open Network (TON) has completed a major upgrade, increasing block generation speed by 6 times, overall performance improved by about 10 times, and transaction confirmation time has been reduced to sub-second levels, achieving a "near-instant" transaction experience.TON officials stated that this upgrade is based on Catchain 2, and the previous confirmation time of about 10 seconds limited instant payments and application response experiences, while this upgrade will make it possible to "complete payments like sending messages." In addition, TON also stated that higher block generation frequency will enhance validator earnings and strengthen staking incentives. Pavel Durov called this upgrade the first step of the "Make TON Great Again" seven-step plan, with the next phase aiming to further reduce transaction fees by about 6 times.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov stated on social media, "The TON blockchain has just completed an upgrade, and now the speed has increased by 10 times. The block generation speed has increased by 6 times, and transactions now achieve instant, sub-second confirmations. This is the first step in the 'Make TON Great Again (MTONGA)' seven-step plan. The next step is to reduce the already low transaction fees by another 6 times."

The Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) released guidelines for the issuance of virtual assets on Thursday, providing clear regulations on the structural design, information disclosure, and distribution methods for stablecoins and real-world asset (RWA) tokens.The guidelines categorize token issuance into three pathways: Category 1 covers fiat-pegged and asset-pegged virtual assets; Category 2 must be distributed through licensed intermediaries, which are responsible for due diligence and ongoing compliance verification; the third category consists of functionally restricted exempt virtual assets.VARA's General Counsel Ruben Bombardi stated that the framework enhances transparency through white papers and independent risk disclosure statements, providing issuers with "greater regulatory certainty" and offering market participants a "single, exclusive reference." These guidelines serve as an interpretative document for the existing "Virtual Asset Issuance Rules Manual" and do not constitute new legislation.

The South Korean exchange Bithumb has initiated asset seizure procedures against relevant users due to its failure to recover a portion of Bitcoin that was mistakenly distributed earlier.The incident occurred during the reward distribution period in February, where a total of 620,000 won was originally planned to be distributed to 249 users, but an operational error led to the distribution being made in "Bitcoin." Although the platform retracted the operation within minutes, some users had already completed transactions or transferred assets, resulting in approximately 1.23 billion won worth of assets that could not be recovered. The platform subsequently contacted users one by one, and most of the funds have been returned, but some users still refuse to return the funds.

The ruling Democratic Party of Korea proposed the "Basic Law on Digital Assets" this Wednesday, aiming to establish a comprehensive legal framework for the issuance, trading, custody, and supervision of digital assets.The bill categorizes value-related digital assets, such as stablecoins linked to fiat currency or real assets, as a special category, requiring issuers to obtain authorization and meet strict standards such as capital thresholds, reserve plans, and redemption obligations. In addition, the bill will introduce a licensing, registration, and information disclosure system for digital asset businesses, prohibit improper behaviors such as market manipulation and insider trading, and propose the establishment of a Digital Asset Committee to coordinate policy.