compliance

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments from lawyers representing the prediction market platform Kalshi and Nevada authorities regarding Nevada's ban on the platform's event contracts. This appeal stems from a lower court ruling that prohibited Kalshi from offering certain event-based contracts in Nevada based on the claim that Kalshi requires a license.The appellate court judges responsible for Thursday's oral arguments and Kalshi's lawyers acknowledged that there have been several state-level enforcement actions against Kalshi and other prediction market platforms, including criminal charges filed in Arizona. However, a federal court last week blocked Arizona authorities from enforcing the state's gambling laws against Kalshi's event contracts."I believe existing case law does indicate that what we want to avoid here is state courts and federal courts simultaneously considering the exact same issue and potentially reaching different conclusions," said Colleen Sinzdak, representing Kalshi.The core argument of Kalshi's debate is that the platform's event contracts fall under "swap" transactions and should be regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, rather than state gambling regulators. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig supported this position in the case involving Crypto.com's prediction market and Nevada authorities.Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal predicted that this case may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. "The questions in the oral arguments are not a reliable signal of the court's leanings; nonetheless, I stand by my long-standing prediction that the Supreme Court will rule on whether sports contracts on designated contract markets fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of the CFTC as swap transactions."

HashKey Chain announced a strategic cooperation with the compliance brokerage infrastructure platform HabitTrade. The two parties will collaborate on the on-chain integration of quality assets and on-chain financial infrastructure, promoting the issuance and circulation of compliant assets.As the first tangible progress, HSKSwap has integrated the open-source securities tokenization protocol Stove Protocol under HabitTrade, supporting on-chain tokenized trading of assets including U.S. stocks.HashKey Chain stated that this cooperation will continuously introduce compliant assets backed by real assets, further improving the on-chain financial infrastructure. In the future, both parties will expand into more asset categories and explore cross-market circulation and on-chain financial application scenarios, promoting the integration of traditional capital markets and the on-chain ecosystem.

According to Cruncbase, financial compliance startup Spektr announced the completion of a $20 million Series A funding round, led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Northzone, Seedcamp, and PSV Tech, bringing the total funding to $26 million to date.The company primarily provides AI Agent-based compliance services to cryptocurrency wallet service providers, including Phantom, as well as traditional financial companies, including risk assessment and sanctions list monitoring.

Financial compliance startup Spektr announced the completion of a $20,000,000 Series A financing round, led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Northzone, Seedcamp, and PSV Tech, bringing the total funding to $26,000,000 to date.The company primarily provides AI Agent-based compliance services to cryptocurrency wallet service providers, including Phantom, as well as traditional financial companies, including risk assessment and sanctions list monitoring.

According to DL News, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire stated that the company currently has no plans to launch a won-pegged stablecoin, but is closely monitoring the progress of relevant legislation in South Korea and seeks to expand its business within the local compliance framework.If South Korea establishes a legal pathway that allows global companies to enter, Circle is willing to apply for a license and set up a local branch, while also providing technical support for Korean institutions to issue stablecoins.

Anthropic has launched an authentication mechanism in some use cases of Claude to prevent abuse, enforce usage policies, and fulfill legal obligations. This process is supported by Persona, requiring users to submit a government-issued photo ID and possibly undergo real-time selfie verification.Anthropic states that the verification data is only used to confirm identity, not for model training, and will not be used for marketing or advertising. If verification fails, users can retry multiple times within the process or submit a form to request manual assistance. Accounts may be banned in cases of repeated violations of usage policies, terms of service, registration from unsupported regions, or use by individuals under 18 years of age.

According to CoinDesk, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) under the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) will jointly issue proposed rules requiring stablecoin issuers to establish a comprehensive anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance system. Specific measures include freezing, intercepting, and rejecting suspicious transactions, as well as complying with the relevant provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act.The rules emphasize an outcome-oriented approach, believing that financial institutions understand their own risks best. Issuers that establish a sound compliance system are typically exempt from enforcement actions. This move aims to implement the GENIUS Act passed last year, which is expected to take full effect in 2027.

According to CoinDesk, the U.S. Treasury is set to release proposed rules requiring stablecoin issuers to establish standards to combat money laundering and sanctions violations.According to a summary of the proposal obtained by CoinDesk, the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) will jointly formulate rules that clarify how issuers can comply with the GENIUS Act passed last year, including establishing controls to block, freeze, and reject suspicious transactions. FinCEN will require issuers' anti-money laundering programs to be able to pause flagged transactions and focus more resources on high-risk customers and activities.When U.S. authorities pursue specific targets, regulated issuers must screen their records for activities related to flagged individuals or entities. OFAC requires issuers to operate risk-based sanctions compliance safeguards in both primary and secondary markets, identifying and rejecting transactions that may violate U.S. sanctions regulations. The proposal emphasizes respect for the industry, believing that financial institutions are best aware of their own money laundering and terrorist financing risks, and companies that maintain appropriate anti-money laundering measures typically do not face enforcement actions.U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that these measures will protect the U.S. financial system from national security threats while not hindering the development of U.S. businesses in the stablecoin ecosystem. The proposal will enter a public comment period and may be revised before finalization.

According to Bloomberg, there have been personnel changes in Binance's compliance team, involving key positions related to financial crime monitoring and sanctions compliance. Its Chief Compliance Officer Noah Perlman is currently discussing future departure matters with management and may leave this year or next year.Noah Perlman joined Binance in 2023, responsible for rebuilding the sanctions enforcement and anti-money laundering system, which is one of the key rectification measures following the company's guilty plea for regulatory violations in the U.S. In response, Binance stated that it "currently has no departure timeline and has not determined a successor," and emphasized that he remains focused on his current work.

On-chain detective ZachXBT released an investigative report on Circle, stating that since 2022, the company has faced issues of "poor compliance enforcement" in multiple incidents involving illegal funds, with a total amount exceeding $420 million.The report points out that Circle, as the issuer of USDC, has always been known for its regulated and well-compliant system. Its token contracts also have the functionality to freeze and blacklist addresses, and it explicitly reserves the right to restrict suspicious accounts in its terms of service. However, these mechanisms were not used timely and effectively during several major security incidents.The report highlights the attack on Drift Protocol on April 1, 2026, where approximately $280 million in assets were stolen. The attacker used Circle's own cross-chain bridge CCTP to transfer over $232 million USDC from Solana to Ethereum within 6 hours, but no assets were frozen during this period. Similar situations occurred in attacks on SwapNet, Cetus Protocol, and Mango Markets, where in some cases, even after law enforcement and industry experts issued freeze requests, Circle still did not take timely action, and even processed the situation only after the assets had been transferred.Additionally, the report noted that in the money laundering investigation involving the hacker group Lazarus Group, Circle's response was significantly slower compared to other stablecoin issuers (such as Tether, Paxos, etc.). In some cases, freeze operations were delayed for several months. Similar delays were also seen in the Ledger supply chain attack and the GMX attack, where USDC remained in suspicious addresses for several hours or even longer without being frozen.ZachXBT stated in the report that this disclosure does not negate the value of Circle's products or the stablecoin itself, but emphasizes that its compliance enforcement decisions have caused "real and significant losses" to the industry.He pointed out that over the past three years, due to multiple failures to act in a timely manner, the DeFi ecosystem has accumulated losses reaching nine figures, and the $420 million is only a conservative estimate of publicly known cases, with the actual scale potentially being higher.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) recently launched a regulatory pilot program for Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP). The first batch of participating institutions includes several regional fintech and digital asset companies, among which KuCoin is the only selected global exchange.The pilot focuses on compliance with anti-money laundering (AML), counter-terrorism financing (CFT), and counter-proliferation financing (CPF), aiming to strengthen risk management and regulatory capabilities in the digital asset industry, and align with international standards such as those set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).According to the arrangements, participating institutions are required to conduct structured regulatory communications, submit regulatory data regularly, and advance compliance practices in key areas such as corporate governance, transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, and cross-border transaction "Travel Rule."KuCoin CEO BC Wong stated that constructive regulatory dialogue is an important foundation for the long-term sustainable development of the digital asset industry, and the company will continue to strengthen communication and cooperation with global regulatory agencies to promote transparency and enhance risk management capabilities.The market generally believes that this selection reflects KuCoin's ongoing progress in advancing compliance strategies globally, while also indicating that Nigeria is moving towards a more systematic and forward-looking phase in digital asset regulation.

According to The Block, Finnish EU-regulated cryptocurrency asset service provider Tesseract Investment Oy has officially launched the Tesseract Dedicated Client Vaults platform, designed specifically for institutional and professional investors.Each vault is an independent smart contract, exclusively allocated to a single client, managed by Tesseract, and can be customized according to the client's investment and compliance needs. Clients can deploy the vault through their own wallets, maintain 100% ownership of the vault tokens, and operate segregated custody accounts in accordance with MiCA requirements.Tesseract CEO James Harris stated that existing pooled vault solutions (such as the Morpho vault) may be classified as collective investment schemes under the MiCA framework, exposing yield tokens to unlicensed securities risks, and this platform aims to provide a compliant alternative.

The Web3 asset data platform RootData has outlined Robinhood's Web3 partners, whose crypto supply chain covers key aspects such as data services, risk control compliance, and trading liquidity. Compliance capabilities are shifting from a "cost item" to a "competitive barrier."Structurally, Robinhood's crypto layout emphasizes compliance first and robust expansion: on one hand, it holds multiple financial and crypto-related licenses in the U.S. and several other regions, giving it a first-mover advantage in advancing its business within the regulatory framework; on the other hand, its partner selection clearly favors suppliers with strong compliance capabilities and mature institutional-level services.In the risk control and compliance aspects, Robinhood has introduced service providers like TRM Labs and Sardine to enhance on-chain transaction monitoring and anti-fraud capabilities; at the infrastructure level, it ensures system stability and data reliability through established networks and service providers such as Arbitrum, Polygon, Alchemy, and Chainlink; in terms of trading and liquidity, it supports platforms like Bitstamp and WonderFi that have compliance operating experience. Related compilation: 【Robinhood Crypto Partner Network Compilation (Continuously Updated)】Crypto projects actively showcasing their partner networks have become a key way to enhance transparency and market trust. It is reported that RootData welcomes Web3 project parties to claim data and continues to track and open more project business relationship disclosure channels. The platform has continuously released multiple editions of the crypto project ecosystem map, nominating Web3 ecosystem partners for upstream clients such as Visa, Stripe, and Coinbase.If you wish to nominate your project in future ecosystem maps, please fill out the 【RootData 2026 Industry Ecosystem Mapping】 form to supplement your important clients and partners.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson announced the launch of the privacy-oriented sidechain Midnight, which has generated its genesis block, marking the official entry of the project into the operational phase.Midnight is developed by Input Output Global and is positioned as a "fourth-generation blockchain," aimed at driving real-world assets on-chain through end-to-end privacy capabilities. The network employs zero-knowledge proof (ZK) technology to achieve selective disclosure of data, meeting compliance requirements while protecting user privacy. Architecturally, Midnight has its own ledger, consensus mechanism, and smart contract environment, and connects with the Cardano ecosystem through interoperable design. Its hybrid ledger supports the simultaneous processing of public and private data within the same transaction and provides the ability to conceal balance and counterparty information. Additionally, Midnight introduces a programming language called Compact, lowering the barrier for developers to build privacy applications, and adopts a dual-token model to optimize network usage costs and incentive mechanisms.

The Federal Court of Australia ordered Binance's Australian derivatives division (i.e., Oztures Trading Pty Ltd) to pay a fine of AUD 10 million (approximately USD 6.9 million).During the period from 2022 to 2023, the entity incorrectly classified over 85% of local customers as wholesale investors, resulting in 524 retail customers being exposed to high-risk crypto derivatives without statutory consumer protections, leading to trading losses of approximately AUD 8,660,000 (about USD 5.9 million) and fee losses of AUD 3,900,000 (about USD 2.7 million). Joe Longo, Chairman of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), stated that Binance failed to establish basic compliance review mechanisms and incorrectly approved hundreds of wholesale investor applications. According to the fact statement submitted to the court, Binance acknowledged flaws in its customer onboarding process, allowing applicants to repeatedly take the eligibility test until they passed, and that senior compliance personnel inadequately reviewed application materials. Binance admitted to six violations, including failing to provide product disclosure statements to retail customers, not conducting target market assessments, and not maintaining a compliant internal dispute resolution system. This fine is in addition to approximately AUD 13.1 million (about USD 9 million) in customer compensation previously supervised by ASIC. The entity's Australian financial services license was revoked in April 2023.