Web3 Wavefronts - Digestible News on Crypto, DeFi and AI

Show description: Michigan’s House Economic Competitiveness Committee advanced Representative Bill G. Schuette’s package of cryptocurrency bills on a party-line vote. The package includes HB 4510, HB 4511, and HB 4513. HB 4510 would authorize the State Treasurer to allocate a capped share of public retirement assets to cryptocurrencies, describe a cap reported at up to five percent of a retirement...

Show description: The government will introduce a bill this week to bring digital asset firms under financial services law and shift oversight from anti-money-laundering registration to Financial Conduct Authority supervision by October 2027. Lawmakers plan to finalize detailed rules by the end of 2026 and to run consultations through 2026 on trading venues, custody, stablecoin payments and relate...

Show description: Texas executed a $5 million purchase of the BlackRock iShares spot Bitcoin ETF as the first tranche of a $10 million allocation authorized under Senate Bill 21, which created a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve administered by the Comptroller's office. Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock described the ETF position as a temporary placeholder while procurement proceeds for a dedicated crypto...

Spotify launched Prompted Playlists, a beta feature that uses artificial intelligence to create playlists based on user prompts and listening history. The feature, initially available in New Zealand, allows users to specify playlist details and set automatic refreshes with new songs. Spotify also updated its AI DJ to accept voice prompts and continues to expand user control over content, aligning...

Show description: On December 5, 2025, WhiteBIT announced that its native token WBT was added to five S&P Dow Jones cryptocurrency indices after meeting eligibility standards that include market capitalization, trading volume, exchange distribution, liquidity, and governance measures. Inclusion places WBT on watch lists of asset managers and funds that track S&P indices and makes WBT eligi...

Italian authorities opened a coordinated, in-depth review of cryptocurrency risks involving the Treasury, the Bank of Italy and the securities regulator to map exposures, identify oversight gaps, and propose policy responses. The review will cover exchanges, custodians, stablecoin arrangements, decentralized finance primitives where they intersect with regulated institutions, and interactions betw...

Show description: Federal authorities seized the domain tickmilleas.com after identifying it as a front for a pig butchering crypto fraud that simulated deposits, staged trades, displayed fabricated balances, delayed withdrawals with invented fees or identity checks, and routed victim funds to operator-controlled wallets and off-platform channels. Investigators in San Diego reported more than 400...

Texas purchased $5 million of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) on November 20, 2025, as the first U.S. state-level bitcoin allocation. The purchase opens the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, a program established by the state legislature in June 2025 and seeded with a $10 million appropriation. The law names the Texas Treasury Safekeeping Trust Company as program manager and requires cold...

Show description: Tether’s USDT has a market capitalization above $100 billion and functions as a primary settlement and trading rail across exchanges and chains. The issuer converts reserve yields from short-term U.S. Treasuries and similar instruments into profits. An ICIJ investigation traced at least $1.4 billion in USDT through a single wallet cluster tied to scams, hacks, and human trafficki...

Show description: Vanguard will permit client trading of select third-party, regulated crypto exchange-traded funds and mutual funds on its platform effective December 3, 2025. The eligible products cited include bitcoin, ether, and solana ETFs. The move reverses a prior Vanguard prohibition on crypto fund trading and affects roughly 50 million clients across retail, advisor, and institutional cha...

The UK will require UK-registered crypto exchanges and platforms to collect verified identities and full transaction records for UK-resident users starting January 1, 2026, and to submit the first filings to HM Revenue & Customs covering the 2026 reporting period in 2027. The domestic rules implement the OECD Cryptoasset Reporting Framework (CARF) and extend reporting to cryptocurrencies, stab...

President Serdar Berdimuhamedov signed a statute on November 28, 2025, that legalizes and regulates cryptocurrency mining, exchanges, and digital asset activity; state media reported the move the same day. The law takes effect January 1, 2026, and establishes the Central Bank of Turkmenistan as the primary regulator charged with licensing exchanges, setting technical standards for distributed ledg...

Upbit suspended deposits and withdrawals after 44.5 billion won was moved from a hot wallet to an unauthorized address, with initial conversion estimates ranging from about $30 million to $37 million as asset baskets and rates were reconciled. Upbit initiated internal forensics while Korean regulators and law enforcement launched on-site inspections and treated the incident as a hot wallet comprom...

Tether’s USDT has approximately $180 billion in market value, and Tether liquidated roughly 40,000 bitcoins that Celsius had posted as collateral during the 2022 market drawdown. Celsius alleged breach of contract, claiming Tether failed to honor a ten-hour margin grace period, and a U.S. bankruptcy judge allowed several claims to proceed. In October, Tether paid $299.5 million to the Celsius esta...

Federal agencies report sharp increases in losses tied to Bitcoin and crypto ATMs, with FTC data showing a near tenfold rise in reported losses between 2020 and 2023, more than $110,000,000 reported in 2023, and at least $65,000,000 in the first half of 2024, and national reporting citing FBI figures placing 2024 losses near $246,700,000 and about $240,000,000 in the first half of 2025. Published...

Show description: Klarna announced KlarnaUSD, a dollar-pegged stablecoin deployed on Tempo, Stripe's payments-focused blockchain, and opened testnet access for developers and partners. Klarna plans a phased mainnet rollout in 2026 beginning with internal operational settlement and later expanding to merchant and consumer payment flows. Issuance and lifecycle controls for KlarnaUSD will use Open Is...

Show description: The South African Reserve Bank flagged crypto assets and stablecoins as potential sources of systemic risk, citing rapid consumer adoption, rising stablecoin volumes near 80 billion rand by mid‑2025, and an estimated 7.8 million domestic users on major exchanges. The review identified a shift from speculative trading to payments, remittances, and merchant settlement that creates...

Show description: U.S. prosecutors allege Ryan Wedding led a multinational drug trafficking organization that moved more than $1 billion in narcotics proceeds and trafficked roughly 60 metric tons of cocaine per year into Los Angeles, and filings list more than 35 indictments in connection with the case. Authorities report seizures of over 4,000 pounds of narcotics, weapons, about $3.2 million in...

Pepperstone announced plans to launch a spot crypto exchange in Australia pending final regulatory approval. CEO Tamas Szabo announced the plan at AusCryptoCon in Sydney and said the company invested more than a year in people, technology, and compliance. The spot exchange will operate as a separate product alongside Pepperstone's existing crypto CFD business and will enable direct ownership of di...

The UK Serious Fraud Office opened a criminal investigation into Basis Markets on November 20, 2025, after the project raised roughly $28 million (about £20 million) and later collapsed. Two men were arrested on suspicion of fraud and money laundering and searches were carried out at properties in Herne Hill, London, and near Bradford, West Yorkshire, with support from the Metropolitan Police and...

Since October 7, 2023, Gaza’s formal payment rails have largely failed after branch and ATM damage, power outages, and restrictions on cash crossings, creating widespread cash shortages for households, merchants, and aid organizations. Local freelancers and traders expanded use of Bitcoin and dollar stablecoins such as USDT to receive remittances to mobile wallets, coordinate relief via token tran...

On November 20, 2025, Bitfury announced a staged $1 billion initiative to fund technologies it described as ethical and allocated $200 million for the first year. The initiative targets four areas: self-sovereign identity, quantum computing and security, transparent decentralized systems, and AI. Bitfury said the first-year funds will support pilots and early validation and that remaining funds wi...

Europol coordinated a Europe-wide operation during Intellectual Property Crime Cyber Patrol Week from November 10 to 14, 2025, with investigators from more than 15 European countries operating from the EUIPO campus in Alicante, Spain. Investigators targeted 69 sites and estimated those sites had a combined 11.8 million annual visitors and developed wallet and service indicators for 25 IPTV provide...

Show description: On November 4 near Oxford masked assailants entered a vehicle, took a luxury watch reported at about £450,000, and accessed cryptocurrency balances cited at about £1.1 million, and Thames Valley Police reported arrests with combined asset values discussed exceeding £1.5 million. Public disclosures have not confirmed whether suspects have been formally charged, which specific cryp...

Show description: Tenaga Nasional Berhad reported cumulative electricity losses of about RM4.6 billion since 2020 linked to illegal crypto mining and flagged 13,827 premises nationwide for illicit connections or meter tampering; utilities recorded 1,800 cases by June and have shut more than 9,000 operations in recent years. Investigators identified tactics including meter bypasses, taps on distrib...