suspension

The Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Paul Atkins, was questioned by Democratic lawmakers during a House Financial Services Committee oversight hearing regarding the suspension of enforcement actions against Tron Foundation founder Justin Sun.Senior Democratic lawmaker Maxine Waters emphasized that the SEC has abandoned nearly all previous cryptocurrency enforcement cases since Trump took office and questioned whether Sun's relationship with Trump influenced this. Atkins stated that he could not discuss individual cases but was willing to provide confidential briefings within the limits of the rules. At the same time, Atkins confirmed that the SEC is working with the CFTC to develop cryptocurrency regulatory rules consistent with the Clarity Act to clarify the jurisdiction of the two agencies.

According to Newspim, Lee Chan-jin, the head of the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) of South Korea, stated that the "Bitcoin misdelivery incident" at Bithumb is a serious event that undermines the credibility of cryptocurrency exchanges. He pointed out that Bithumb actually holds only about 42,000 bitcoins, and this misdelivery exposed the severe risks of "bookkeeping transactions" trading fictitious assets without security guarantees.He emphasized that if the investigation confirms illegal negligence, the highest level of sanctions will be imposed, including fines and business suspensions. He also suggested adding provisions for revocable or restricted access licenses in the future "Basic Law on Digital Assets" to strengthen the regulation of internal controls at exchanges.The incident occurred on February 6, when Bithumb mistakenly distributed 2,000 bitcoins to each of 249 customers as rewards (originally intended to be 2,000 Korean won), totaling 620,000 bitcoins, which was valued at approximately 61 trillion won (about 45 billion USD) at the time. Bithumb intercepted the transactions within 20 minutes, but 125 bitcoins were still sold.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced on the X platform that due to funding expiration and the partial shutdown of the U.S. government, the SEC is currently operating according to the agency's plan during the shutdown. Starting from January 31, 2026, until further notice, only a very small number of staff will continue to work.

The South Korean financial authorities are studying the introduction of a "payment suspension" system in cases of virtual asset price manipulation to prevent suspects from transferring or hiding illicit gains during the investigation phase.According to reports, the Financial Services Commission of South Korea proposed during a regular meeting last November to consider practices in the capital market regarding stock price manipulation, taking preemptive freezing measures on accounts suspected of manipulating virtual asset prices to restrict withdrawals, transfers, and payment outflows. The report pointed out that under the current system, the confiscation or recovery of illicit gains from virtual assets usually requires a prosecutor's investigation and a court warrant, which poses a risk of assets being transferred during this period. Internally, the Financial Services Commission believes that a payment suspension mechanism similar to that in capital market law could be introduced in the proposed "second phase of virtual asset legislation" to more effectively prevent unrealized gains from being disposed of prematurely. Relevant officials from the financial authorities stated that since virtual assets are easier to conceal once transferred to personal wallets, such a system may help strengthen regulation and asset preservation in the early stages.

According to CriptoNoticias, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has decided to suspend its local services in Argentina. The company notified users on December 31, 2025, that it will stop supporting the purchase and sale of the USDC stablecoin using the Argentine peso starting January 31, 2026.Coinbase stated that this move is a "strategic pause" rather than a permanent exit, aimed at reassessing and strengthening its market strategy. During the pause, other cryptocurrency operations (including sending and receiving) will continue to operate normally.

Binance has suspended Ukrainian users from using fiat payment service provider Bifinity UAB for withdrawals via Visa and Mastercard due to changes in regulatory policies. A Binance spokesperson confirmed this news and added that the announcement regarding the change in payment methods only applies to Ukrainian users who have previously used Bifinity services.This change will affect some fiat deposit and withdrawal methods for Ukrainian users, but the functions for depositing, withdrawing, and trading cryptocurrencies will remain unaffected. Users can still use Visa and Mastercard for deposits and purchasing cryptocurrencies, Apple Pay and Google Pay are still available for account top-ups, and Swift transfers continue to support deposits and withdrawals.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin responded on the X platform to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders' proposal to pause the construction of large AI data centers.Vitalik believes that the truly effective approach should be to prepare the capability to "cut 90-99% of computing power" at critical moments in the future, rather than just slowing down immediately; he also supports distinguishing between "super-large clusters" and consumer-grade AI hardware, and advocates for decentralized development.

The cross-chain smart wallet project Blocto announced on social media:"After serving over 2 million users for five years, we are heavy-hearted to announce that the Blocto wallet service will soon be terminated.As one of the earliest ecosystem supporters of Flow, Blocto built the main infrastructure of this ecosystem, including the Blocto wallet, BloctoSwap, Blocto cross-chain bridge, and BloctoBay. We also established the most utilized FLOW staking node. We have partnered with top projects and served millions of users, for which we are immensely proud.However, solely focusing on creating excellent products is not always sustainable. With the price of FLOW dropping from nearly $40 in 2021 to currently below $0.3 (a decline of over 99%), Blocto has been operating at a significant loss. Over the past few years, we have incurred over $5.5 million in losses to maintain community services. But this cannot continue indefinitely. Realizing that our operating funds are about to run out, we began attempting to communicate with the leadership of Flow/Dapper starting in June of this year.After six months of relentless efforts, we have not been able to secure a single meeting with the leadership. Each email exchange takes weeks, while our remaining funds continue to deplete. During these months, we have neither received clear support nor been able to engage in constructive discussions about a sustainable development path. Now, we have no funds left to continue bearing these costs.Effective December 18, 2025, at 7 PM Pacific Standard Time (termination date), the Blocto wallet, BloctoSwap, and Blocto cross-chain bridge will cease operations. The staking service of Blocto's own nodes will not be affected."It is worth noting that Blocto completed a Series A funding round in February 2023 with a valuation of $80 million, with participation from Mark Cuban, IPX, and 500 Global, although the specific amount raised was not disclosed. At that time, Blocto had already supported the Aptos, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Flow, and BNB Chain networks.

According to Bloomberg, trading in futures and options at CME Group was suspended due to a data center failure, affecting markets worth trillions of dollars in contracts, including S&P 500 index futures, U.S. Treasuries, crude oil, gasoline, and palm oil.The forex platform EBS resumed service at 12 PM London time after several hours of downtime. In Singapore, oil traders indicated that CME is a key component of the global market mechanism. Gerald Gan, Deputy Chief Investment Officer at Reed Capital Partners in Singapore, pointed out that the outage is "very frustrating" and noted that the liquidity of alternative platforms may not be as sufficient as that of CME.Amelie Derambure, a portfolio manager at Amundi SA, stated that fortunately, Friday was a light trading day; otherwise, it would have been a "considerable obstacle." The outage occurred the day after Thanksgiving, when U.S. markets had only a half-day of trading.Emmanuel Valavanis, a sales specialist at Forte Securities in London, remarked that having this happen on the last day of month-end and year-end trading, affecting trillions of dollars in trades, is very unfortunate. This outage has surpassed the several-hour downtime incident caused by a technical error in 2019.

MERL surged over 10% in a short time after Bithumb announced the suspension of MERL deposits and withdrawals.

The cryptocurrency concept stock Star Chain (00399.HK) announced before the market opened that it has been ordered by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to suspend trading on November 26, due to the exchange's concerns that the company has failed to meet the requirements for continued listing. The stock plummeted 73%, closing at HKD 0.064 per share, a 91% drop from its peak price at the end of July.The Hong Kong Stock Exchange pointed out that according to Rule 13.24 of the Listing Rules, Star Chain has failed to maintain sufficient operational levels and does not have enough valuable assets to support its operations, which allows its shares to continue to be listed. Therefore, it has required the company to suspend trading starting November 26. Star Chain responded in the announcement that it has decided to apply to the Listing Committee of the exchange for a review.

According to Caixin, cryptocurrency concept stock Star Chain (00399.HK) announced before the market opened on November 17, 2025, that it was ordered by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to suspend trading on November 26, due to the exchange questioning the company's failure to meet the continuing listing requirements. The stock plummeted 73% on November 17, closing at HKD 0.064 per share, a 91% drop from its peak price at the end of July.The Hong Kong Stock Exchange pointed out that according to Rule 13.24 of the Listing Rules, Star Chain has failed to maintain sufficient operational levels and does not have sufficiently valuable assets to support its operations, which allows its shares to continue to maintain listing status. Therefore, it requires the company to suspend trading starting November 26. Star Chain responded in the announcement that it has decided to apply to the Listing Committee of the exchange for a review.

ChainCatcher news, India's once largest cryptocurrency exchange WazirX will resume operations on October 24, 2025, ending a more than year-long shutdown due to the theft of over $230 million in crypto assets.The exchange has completed a restructuring plan approved by the Singapore High Court and has received support from nearly all creditors. In the initial phase of the restart, WazirX will open limited trading pairs, including cryptocurrency trading pairs and the USDT/INR market, and promises to offer zero trading fees for all users. The platform will also launch a token distribution and recovery plan to address user asset issues.

ChainCatcher news, according to on-chain analysts' monitoring, the SLERF contract peaked at $0.43, while OKX spot reached a maximum of $0.39, and the on-chain price was only $0.09167, resulting in a price difference of up to 4.6 times. Analysis suggests that this may be due to SLERF undergoing contract replacement, and the suspension of deposits on OKX has led to a sharp decline in liquidity in the spot market, creating a small pool price difference situation.As of the time of publication, the Binance contract price was $0.1872, the OKX spot price was $0.1934, and the on-chain price was $0.07093. It is also reminded that once the price index synchronizes with on-chain data, the contract price may experience a sharp correction, advising investors to operate cautiously.

ChainCatcher news, according to market news, Typus Finance announced that the team has completed internal code fixes for the vulnerabilities disclosed the day before yesterday and is currently waiting for an independent security expert review before redeployment.Typus emphasized that during the contract suspension period, all perpetual contract positions will not be liquidated, and users' collateral assets are safe and can be retrieved after the security check is completed. The official statement also mentioned that fund tracking work is being coordinated with partners and law enforcement agencies, and the asset recovery plan is still being developed internally. The team reiterated that it will continue to maintain transparency and inform users promptly after key developments.

ChainCatcher news, according to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange announcement, Hong Kong listed company Linkage International surged over 47% in early trading before a brief suspension, and trading has now resumed.It is reported that the company previously disclosed that its Nasdaq-listed affiliate Allied Gaming & Entertainment (AGAE) has invested in Bitcoin and increased its holdings in Ethereum, and has officially incorporated cryptocurrency into its balance sheet, as well as plans to expand blockchain payment methods and develop its own RAW tokenization model.

ChainCatcher news, according to the official announcement, the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit has temporarily suspended the withdrawal service for EthereumFair (ETHF) due to block generation delay issues on the ETHF network.The withdrawal service will resume once the network stability is confirmed, and the specific time will be notified through an updated announcement. Upbit also pointed out that ETHF is an asset previously distributed through airdrops, and the platform only supports its withdrawal service.

ChainCatcher news, according to Scroll DAO representative olimpio (@OlimpioCrypto) disclosed on social media platform X, Scroll DAO officially announced the suspension of its governance mechanism, and DAO leader Eugene has officially resigned this week. According to the latest representative meeting content shared by olimpio, Scroll co-founder Haichen (@shenhaichen) stated that the team is "redesigning governance," but has not provided a clear follow-up plan or timeline.Team member Raza (@razacodes) emphasized in the meeting that they prefer to use the term "pause" rather than "stop" or "dismantle" to describe this governance change. Currently, several governance proposals (including financial management proposals) are still in progress, and their execution status remains uncertain.In addition, olimpio pointed out that the Scroll team repeatedly used the term "experiment" to describe the current governance during the meeting and stated that they need time to sort out the situation. Notably, as a community representative with 176K SCR and ranked fourth in governance power, olimpio claimed to have been banned from accessing the Scroll Discord server, further raising community concerns about the project's transparency.