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Today at a glance

US crypto rulemaking shifts from Congress to federal agencies as venues race into stock perpetuals and round-the-clock trading.

2 signals
  • Legislative setbackThe Senate failed to advance the Clarity Act 49-50, far short of 60 votes, with Tillis switching to no and preserving a later retry.#01
  • Stock perpetualsKalshi, Coinbase and Kraken parent Payward filed for US single-stock perpetual futures, and Binance listed seven USDT-margined stock perpetuals at up to 20x leverage.#02

Stories are ranked by impact; the first three are the edition highlights. This edition displays 10 of 140 candidates.

#01
PolicyEdition highlightEvent record
8.0

Clarity Act Fails in Senate, Handing Crypto Rulemaking to SEC and CFTC

On Tuesday the Senate failed to advance the Clarity Act in a 49-50 procedural vote, far short of the 60 votes needed, with Democrats voting as a bloc and Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Josh Hawley and Jerry Moran joining them. Within days, SEC Chair Paul Atkins explicitly tied a new tokenized-stock "Innovation Exemption" to the bill's failure, while the CFTC expanded no-action relief for "passive software" providers and sent a broader crypto rulemaking package to the White House for review.

The vote shifts the center of gravity for US crypto policy from Congress to the federal agencies, meaning the rules of the road for market structure, tokenized securities and DeFi interfaces may now be written through exemptions, no-action letters and guidance rather than legislation. That affects exchanges, brokers, wallet providers and tokenized-equity venues directly, and it leaves the resulting framework more vulnerable to reversal by a future administration than a statute would be.

Sen. Thom Tillis initially voted yes before switching to no, a procedural maneuver that preserved the option of bringing the bill back later, and seven negotiating Democrats — Alsobrooks, Gillibrand, Warner, Booker, Cortez Masto, Gallego and Warnock — called the outcome "a setback, but not the end." The SEC's exemption gives Tokenized Securities Venues temporary relief from being treated as an "exchange" under the Exchange Act, while CFTC Staff Letter 26-25 expands earlier Letter 26-09 relief so passive software developers, including some wallet interfaces, generally avoid introducing-broker registration under Section 4d(g), Section 4k(1) and Regulation 3.12(a) when connecting users to regulated derivatives markets.

rss · Decrypt · · 2 sources

Background, discussion, and references

Market impact

The transmission channel here is regulatory rather than monetary: agency-level exemptions and no-action relief lower registration risk for tokenized US equity venues, DeFi interfaces and self-custodial wallets that route users to regulated derivatives markets, which can influence where tokenized-equity liquidity and listings migrate. Because these measures rest on staff letters and temporary exemptions instead of statute, a persistent regulatory-durability discount remains for US-exposed crypto business models even as near-term compliance friction eases.

Background

The Clarity Act, formally the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (H.R.3633), passed the House on July 17, 2025 by a vote of 294-134 and was designed to split oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the CFTC. Because the Senate generally needs 60 votes to end debate on legislation, the bill required bipartisan support, and negotiations stalled amid disputes over President Trump's own crypto dealings. Congress had already passed the GENIUS Act covering stablecoins, so market structure was the remaining major piece of crypto legislation.

References

Tags

#crypto-regulation#SEC#CFTC#market-structure#US-policy

#02
CryptoEdition highlightEvent record
7.5

Kalshi files with SEC and CFTC for US single-stock perpetual futures

Kalshi filed a proposed rule change with the SEC and submitted it to the CFTC on Friday to offer perpetual futures tied to individual US stocks, with the CFTC having not yet approved the proposal. The filing landed the same day Coinbase submitted a separate proposal for single-stock perpetual futures, and Kraken parent Payward filed through Bitnomial Exchange for similar products.

If approved, the products would import a leverage format that is standard in crypto markets — perpetual contracts with funding payments — into US single-stock trading, potentially reshaping how US traders express leveraged equity views. The parallel filings from Kalshi, Coinbase and Bitnomial signal that crypto-native venues are positioning for equity derivatives as their core derivatives business matures.

The proposed contracts would carry no preset expiration date and would use periodic funding payments between long and short positions to keep prices aligned with the underlying stocks; Kalshi said they would be treated as security futures products and cleared through its CFTC-registered clearinghouse, Kalshi Klear. Payward said it plans to start with perpetual futures on 10 US equities including Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, and is working toward 24/5 trading.

rss · Cointelegraph · · 2 sources

Background, discussion, and references

Market impact

The filings themselves do not change live markets, but approval would create a new leveraged venue for US equity exposure and extend funding-rate-driven derivatives mechanics into single stocks, an adjacency that crypto exchanges with existing perpetuals infrastructure could monetize. The main transmission channel is regulatory: the SEC's stated willingness to act under existing statutory authority after the CLARITY Act failed to advance in the Senate shapes how quickly such products can reach traders relative to crypto spot and derivatives listings.

Background

Perpetual futures are derivative contracts with no expiry date that can be held indefinitely, and they use periodic funding payments between longs and shorts to keep the contract price tethered to the underlying asset — a structure pioneered in crypto markets. Because their underlying would be a single security, these contracts fall under the joint jurisdiction of the CFTC and the SEC as security futures products, a framework Congress established in December 2000. Kalshi is a US prediction market that already offers crypto perpetual futures, including Bitcoin, Ether, Solana and XRP, after receiving CFTC approval for its Bitcoin perpetual contract in May.

References

Tags

#perpetual-futures#regulation#kalshi#coinbase#market-structure

#03
CryptoEdition highlightEvent record
7.5

Grayscale's Zcash ETF nears $1B as ZEC doubles past $1,500

Grayscale's Zcash ETF (ZCSH), which began trading on NYSE Arca on Aug. 25, has reached $914.53 million in net assets and $270.95 million in cumulative net inflows, putting it roughly $85 million short of $1 billion. Over the same period ZEC roughly doubled to trade around $1,540 on Sept. 19, while ZEC futures open interest climbed to a record of about $3.5 billion and futures volume crossed $10 billion for the first time since early June.

This is a clear example of regulated, brokerage-accessible exposure to a single altcoin expanding at the same time as record leveraged positioning builds in its derivatives market, meaning institutional inflows and speculative leverage are now reinforcing each other in the same asset. It also tests whether a converted Grayscale trust can scale toward the $1 billion mark that has become a benchmark for altcoin ETF viability, which will inform how issuers and regulators approach similar single-asset products.

Because ZCSH physically holds ZEC, price appreciation inflates the assets already inside the fund alongside new creations, which is why its $914.53 million asset base is more than three times its $270.95 million cumulative net inflows. Grayscale announced a 3-for-1 forward split on Sept. 18, with shareholders of record at the Sept. 28 close receiving two additional shares per share held and distribution after the Sept. 29 close, cutting per-share net asset value to roughly one-third of its pre-split level.

rss · CryptoSlate · · Single source

Background, discussion, and references

Market impact

The main transmission channel is structural: ZCSH creates a persistent, brokerage-accessible bid for ZEC that shows up as fund creations and NAV growth, while record open interest near $3.5 billion and elevated turnover make the spot market more sensitive to liquidations if leveraged positions unwind. The planned 3-for-1 split changes per-share pricing and liquidity characteristics of ZCSH itself without altering the fund's underlying ZEC holdings, and the advisory votes on retaining the halving schedule and delaying NSM reissuance to 2031 keep ZEC's 21 million supply cap and scarcity narrative intact alongside expanding regulated access.

Background

Zcash is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency that uses zero-knowledge proofs to shield transaction details, and it caps supply at 21 million coins with a Bitcoin-style halving schedule. Grayscale operates crypto investment vehicles that convert into exchange-traded funds listed on U.S. exchanges; ZCSH is its spot Zcash ETF on NYSE Arca, giving ordinary brokerage accounts a regulated way to gain ZEC exposure without holding the token directly. Futures open interest measures the total value of outstanding derivative contracts and is often read as a proxy for how much leveraged capital is committed to an asset. NU7 is Zcash's planned seventh major network upgrade, an advisory vote on which this month saw about 2.4 million ZEC participate, roughly two-thirds of eligible supply.

References

Tags

#zcash#etf#grayscale#crypto-markets#institutional-adoption

#04
7.5

SlowMist and OKX Confirm Kernel-Level Spy Code in FomoPeek App

Blockchain security firm SlowMist (Slow Fog) and the security team at crypto exchange OKX jointly confirmed that the FomoPeek app ships with spy code that operates at the kernel level of the user's device, according to a report carried by ababnews.com and a parallel warning published by blockchain.news.

Kernel-level malware sits below the normal app sandbox, so it can reach data that ordinary app permissions cannot, making the finding a direct threat to wallet secrets and personal data of anyone who installed the app; the involvement of a major exchange's security team also signals that the threat is being treated as credible rather than speculative.

Because the offending code runs with kernel privileges, it is difficult for a user to detect or remove through ordinary app uninstallation, and security researchers typically advise treating an infected device as fully compromised, up to and including reflashing or abandoning the device for any wallet-related activity.

google_news · ababnews.com · · 2 sources

Background, discussion, and references

Market impact

The transmission channel here is user-side custody risk rather than protocol-level or price-level exposure: wallets that interacted with the compromised app could be drained by attackers, creating potential forced outflows from affected addresses, while the broader effect is a sentiment and trust hit to third-party crypto mobile apps and to app-distribution channels promoted through exchanges and Web3 campaigns. The finding does not appear systemic to any major venue, so its market footprint is likely limited to the assets held by users of the affected app.

Background

The kernel is the core of an operating system that mediates all access to memory, storage, network interfaces and input devices; code running at kernel level therefore bypasses the sandboxing that normally isolates one mobile app from another. SlowMist is a blockchain security firm known for wallet and smart-contract incident response and threat intelligence, while OKX is one of the largest global crypto exchanges and maintains its own security research capability. Mobile apps remain a common distribution channel for crypto-targeted malware, because users frequently sideload apps or install niche tools that never go through a rigorous app-store review.

References

Tags

#security#malware#OKX#Slow Fog#mobile-app

#05
7.5

Binance lists 7 USDT-margined stock perpetual futures with up to 20x leverage

Binance has launched seven new USDT-margined perpetual futures contracts tied to stock exposure, offering leverage of up to 20x. The listing extends the exchange's derivatives lineup beyond crypto assets into equity-linked products that trade continuously around the clock.

The launch blurs the boundary between crypto derivatives venues and traditional equity markets, giving crypto-native traders leveraged, round-the-clock exposure to stocks without a brokerage account. Because Binance is the largest exchange by derivatives volume, the move raises the competitive bar for rival platforms and puts equity-linked derivatives squarely in front of regulators.

Because the contracts are USDT-margined, collateral, margin and settlement are denominated in the stablecoin rather than the underlying shares, so the product provides synthetic price exposure with no physical delivery of stock. Leverage of up to 20x is far above the margin levels typical of regulated equity markets, and as perpetual contracts they carry no expiry date, meaning positions can be held indefinitely against periodic funding payments.

google_news · Pluang · · 2 sources

Background, discussion, and references

Market impact

The story transmits to crypto markets mainly through Binance's derivatives venue, where open interest, funding rates and liquidation activity in these stock contracts add a new source of leverage and possible arbitrage flow against tokenized-equity and spot share markets that close overnight. Because the underlying share markets are not continuously open, the contracts can absorb volatile repricing around weekends and holidays, making funding and liquidation dynamics on Binance the key channel to watch.

Background

Perpetual futures are derivatives with no expiry date that track an underlying price through a periodic funding rate paid between long and short holders. Tokenized or equity-linked crypto products represent economic exposure to traditional stocks on a blockchain or exchange ledger, an area platforms such as Kraken have entered with tokenized stocks and ETFs. Crypto venues trade 24/7, whereas stock exchanges keep fixed sessions and close on weekends and holidays, which is part of the appeal of offering equity exposure in a perpetual-futures wrapper.

References

Tags

#binance#perpetual-futures#tokenized-stocks#derivatives#leverage

#06
7.5

LSEG plans 24/5 trading and tokenized equity system

London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) is planning to introduce 24/5 trading and a tokenized equity system, per a report by Cryptonews.net. The plan would extend trading beyond the traditional London cash-equity session and add blockchain-based representation of listed shares.

A major traditional exchange operator adopting round-the-clock hours and tokenized settlement would blur the line between conventional market infrastructure and crypto-native venues, potentially forcing rival exchanges and brokers to follow. It also strengthens the broader real-world-asset (RWA) tokenization narrative that crypto firms have been promoting.

The 24/5 label refers to continuous trading from Sunday evening through Friday evening, leaving weekends closed, rather than a true 24/7 market. Tokenized equity systems typically use blockchain tokens backed 1:1 by actual shares held in custody, which requires corporate records and on-chain data to stay synchronized; LSEG's plan is described as a proposal rather than a launched product.

google_news · Cryptonews.net · · Single source

Background, discussion, and references

Market impact

The transmission path runs through the tokenization narrative: confirmation that a venue of LSEG's scale is pursuing blockchain-based equity representation could lift sentiment for tokenized-equity and RWA-related crypto assets, and for exchanges and custodians positioning around 24/5 trading. It also raises competitive pressure on crypto-native venues that currently dominate around-the-clock trading, as traditional infrastructure moves toward their hours and settlement models.

Background

LSEG is the parent company of the London Stock Exchange and a major global provider of financial market infrastructure and data. Tokenized equity refers to digital representations of traditional company shares recorded on a blockchain, backed one-to-one by the underlying stock. Extended-hours trading is already offered by retail-focused brokers such as Robinhood and Trading 212, which let users trade stocks outside standard exchange sessions. LSEG's move would bring that model, and blockchain-based settlement, into mainstream exchange infrastructure.

References

Tags

#tokenization#market-structure#LSEG#equities#trading-hours

#07
7.5

Bastion wins conditional OCC approval for national trust bank charter

Stablecoin infrastructure provider Bastion said the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) granted preliminary conditional approval for a national trust bank charter for its proposed Bastion Platforms National Trust Company. The new charter adds OCC federal supervision on top of the state licenses Bastion already holds, including a New York trust charter acquired in February 2025, and the entity will offer stablecoin custody and wallets, payment infrastructure and white-label issuance from a single federally regulated institution.

This is a significant regulatory milestone for stablecoin infrastructure because it lets one federally supervised entity bundle custody, wallets, payments and white-label issuance instead of stitching together state-by-state licenses. It follows final approvals for Circle and BitGo and a conditional approval for Ripple, showing that the national trust bank charter has become the crypto industry's main route into the US banking system.

The approval is preliminary and conditional, and the proposed trust bank cannot accept deposits or make loans, so it is not a conventional commercial bank and carries limited near-term systemic weight. OCC rules require such charters to begin operations within a fixed window, and Paxos's earlier conditional approval lapsed in March 2023 after it missed the 18-month operational deadline, making execution timing a key variable.

rss · Cointelegraph · · Single source

Background, discussion, and references

Market impact

The charter routes institutional stablecoin custody and issuance demand into a federally supervised entity, which can pull custody and white-label issuance flows toward OCC-regulated venues and reinforce the compliance advantage of federally chartered players over state-licensed competitors. It also widens the set of regulated counterparties available to stablecoin issuers and institutional allocators, though the prohibition on deposits and lending caps how far that balance-sheet effect can extend.

Background

A national trust bank charter is a federal banking license granted by the OCC that permits fiduciary and custody activities but not deposit-taking or lending; for decades it served corporate trustees, and since 2025 it has become the crypto industry's preferred entry point into the US banking system. The OCC clarified in May 2025 that banks may engage in crypto-asset custody and execution services, and in July 2025 the OCC, the Federal Reserve and the FDIC jointly issued a statement on crypto-asset safekeeping by banking organizations. Bastion had raised $14.6 million in a September 2025 round led by Coinbase Ventures, with participation from Sony, Samsung's investment subsidiary, Andreessen Horowitz's crypto arm and Hashed.

References

Tags

#stablecoins#OCC#banking-charter#crypto-regulation#custody

#08
7.0

Solana Cuts Target Slot Time to 250ms in Third Speed Upgrade

Solana reduced its target slot time from 300 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds, a roughly 17% faster block-production cadence and the network's third such cut since August. The change is the third of four planned stages under the SIMD-0525 proposal, which has walked slot time down from 400ms at genesis to 350ms, then 300ms, and now 250ms.

Faster slots shorten the gap between blockchain settlement and the near-instant confirmations users expect from traditional exchanges, which mainly benefits latency-sensitive applications such as oracles and automated market makers. This matters because Solana competes for high-frequency trading and DeFi activity on execution freshness, even though raw transaction throughput is unchanged.

This is not a capacity upgrade: each shorter slot is allotted proportionally less computation and data, so the network carries the same total load in smaller, more frequent pieces. Because an epoch is fixed at 432,000 slots, the compressed slot time shortens the expected epoch length from roughly 36 hours to about 30 hours, quietly accelerating staking rewards and validator schedules; a final step to 200ms has no mainnet activation date and will only proceed if block-skip rates stay in check.

rss · Decrypt · · Single source

Background, discussion, and references

Market impact

The transmission runs through Solana's DeFi infrastructure rather than through supply or regulation: fresher price feeds and tighter execution windows can make on-chain oracles and automated market makers more competitive with centralized venues, which is a factor in how liquidity and trading volume may be distributed across SOL-denominated DeFi venues. Compressed epochs also shift the timing of staking reward accrual and validator scheduling, a consideration for staking service providers and delegators.

Background

A slot is the short window handed to one validator—a computer that helps run the network and gets paid for it—to build and publish a block, which is a batch of confirmed transactions; shrink that window and the whole chain's heartbeat quickens. Validators keep the leader role, the temporary right to build blocks, for four consecutive slots before handing it off, so at 250ms per slot that control window shrinks from 1.2 seconds to one second. SIMD-0525 is Solana's formal process for proposing and approving network changes, and the same instinct to narrow the gap between settlement and instant confirmation also drives Alpenglow, a separate consensus overhaul being tested to cut transaction finality from a 12.8-second wait to something closer to instant.

References

Tags

#solana#blockchain#protocol-upgrade#layer-1#performance

#09
7.0

Coinbase Sued Over Allegedly Improper Account Lockouts, Putting Custody Access in Focus

A lawsuit has been filed against Coinbase alleging the exchange "improperly and unreasonably" locked customers out of their accounts, according to a CoinMarketCap report. The complaint centers on users being denied access to funds held on the platform rather than on any reported hack or loss of customer assets.

Because custodial exchanges hold legal control over customer accounts and can restrict access unilaterally, a legal challenge to those lockouts tests how much discretion centralized platforms have over user funds. The case lands amid intensifying scrutiny of US exchange practices, so its outcome could influence how other platforms design and document account-freeze and appeals procedures.

Account lockouts at major exchanges like Coinbase are typically triggered by automated risk and compliance systems, such as suspicious login activity, identity verification (KYC) review, anti-money-laundering checks, or sanctions screening, and the dispute generally hinges on how quickly and how transparently those reviews are resolved. The claim in this case targets the reasonableness of the lockouts themselves, framing them as an access-to-funds problem rather than a security feature.

google_news · CoinMarketCap · · Single source

Background, discussion, and references

Market impact

The exposure here is concentrated in Coinbase itself, as a major centralized custodian and a listed company, rather than in any specific token, with the transmission running through sentiment about exchange account-freeze practices and compliance risk instead of through asset supply or protocol liquidity. It also feeds into the broader debate over the trade-off between exchange risk controls and user access to funds, which is a recurring consideration for traders and institutions weighing whether to keep balances on centralized venues.

Background

Custodial exchanges such as Coinbase hold customer assets on their behalf and operate under anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer obligations, which require monitoring accounts and, in some cases, restricting them. Account lockouts are a standard risk-control tool meant to protect users and satisfy regulators, but they can leave legitimate customers temporarily or indefinitely unable to move their funds. In the United States, exchanges face overlapping oversight from the SEC, the CFTC and state regulators, and disputes over customer access to funds have become a recurring theme in how digital-asset platforms are policed. Because balances sit with the exchange rather than in the user's own wallet, customers depend on the platform's internal review and appeals process rather than on self-custody.

References

Tags

#coinbase#lawsuit#exchange-operations#account-lockouts#crypto-regulation

#10
AI & TechEvent record
7.0

PlanetScale launches TIN full-text search extension for Postgres

PlanetScale announced TIN (Text INdex), a full-text search extension for PlanetScale Postgres that adds a dedicated inverted index type, BM25 relevance ranking, and the TINQL query language. It is the first search capability PlanetScale has shipped for its Postgres product, and the company says it was among the most-requested features from customers.

It puts PlanetScale into a fast-growing race among database vendors to bundle search directly into Postgres, a segment that already includes ParadeDB's pg_search, Timescale's pg_textsearch, and search features from Neon and Databricks. If these offerings mature, teams that today run a separate search engine such as Elasticsearch alongside Postgres may need one less moving part in their stack.

Per PlanetScale's documentation and community reports, TIN's performance characteristics are only available on PlanetScale's cloud service: the related open-source local extension (github.com/planetscale/lead) is intended mainly for testing TINQL syntax and does not match the cloud version's performance. Benchmark claims come from the vendor rather than independent testing, so results should be validated against a team's own workload.

hackernews · ksec · · Discussion · Single source

Background, discussion, and references

Background

Postgres already ships built-in full-text search through the tsvector, tsquery and ts_rank functions, which support functional indexing and query optimization, but many developers find its ranking quality and index sizes limiting compared with dedicated search engines. TIN-style extensions target that gap by adding an inverted index and BM25 scoring — the ranking algorithm popularized by Lucene and used by Elasticsearch and SQLite's FTS5 — so relevance ordering behaves more like a purpose-built search engine while the data stays inside Postgres.

Discussion

Hacker News commenters were split: skeptics asked why they should adopt a non-core, cloud-only extension when Postgres already has sophisticated built-in full-text search (tsvector/tsquery/ts_rank) and pointed to weak experiences with ts_query's large indexes, while others read the wave of vendor search features as a sign of AI-era coding productivity. Several noted the local version is syntax-only and that comparable alternatives already exist (ParadeDB pg_search, Timescale pg_textsearch, Neon/Databricks Lakebase Search), and one commenter highlighted SQLite FTS's Lucene-style queries as a benchmark Postgres has yet to match.

References

Tags

#postgres#full-text-search#databases#planetscale#developer-tools