Autor Cointelegraph by Christina Comben

Crypto.com has received a Stored Value Facilities license from the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, allowing residents to pay Dubai government fees using cryptocurrencies via its platform, the company said Monday.The company says the license allows users to fund payments in digital assets while settlements are made in UAE dirhams or in dirham-backed stablecoins approved by the central bank under the SVF framework.The approval allows Crypto.com to activate its partnership with Dubai’s Department of Finance, giving the exchange access to provide digital asset payment services for government fees through its platform under Dubai’s cashless payments strategy. The company said the license could also support future payment integrations with Emirates Airlines and Dubai Duty Free, though those services remain subject to further approvals from the UAE central bank.Crypto.com secures SVF license. Source: Crypto.comThe SVF authorization applies to its local Dubai entity, Foris DAX Middle East FZE, which trades as Crypto.com. Subject to further sign-offs from the central bank, the company said the license will also allow it to start crypto-funded payment integrations with Emirates Airlines and Dubai Duty Free, extending the same digital asset-to-dirham settlement model into commercial payments.Cointelegraph reached out to Crypto.com and the Central Bank of the UAE for comment, but had not received a response by publication. Related: Crypto.com gets into prediction markets through High Roller tie-upCrypto.com expands UAE regulatory and payments pushThe new authorization adds another layer to Crypto.com’s regulatory footprint in the UAE, where it already holds a Virtual Asset Service Provider license from VARA and promotes its platform as an institutional-grade, compliance-focused venue for digital assets.Outside the UAE, the company has been building a similar regulated profile, including securing licensing to operate under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regime and obtaining conditional approval from the United States Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust bank charter that would allow it to act as a qualified digital asset custodian.At the same time, Crypto.com is expanding into event-based derivatives and prediction markets through a regulated US affiliate, part of a broader strategy to combine tighter regulatory oversight with a growing range of trading and payments products around cryptocurrencies.Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs — Mid-2026

Revolut users reported that the app briefly displayed Bitcoin prices plunging to around $39,900 on Friday, while some traders also received notifications suggesting extreme price moves, including that BTC had reached a 52-week low of 2 cents.Users further reported on X apparent simultaneous price drops across multiple cryptocurrencies, including XRP and Solana (SOL), as well as stablecoins such as USDt (USDT) and USDC (USDC).The anomalies, which quickly reversed, appear to have been confined to the Revolut app, with no matching price dislocation visible across aggregated multi-exchange data or derivatives markets during the same period. External pricing sources such as CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko showed no corresponding movement in Bitcoin or other major assets, suggesting the incident was likely caused by a platform-specific pricing or data issue rather than a broader market event.Revolut said BTC had dropped to 2 cents. Source: That Martini Guy BRevolut said it was experiencing issues affecting some of the app’s functionalities and that its teams were working on a fix.Experts point to data feed error or thin liquidityRanveer Arora, ex-PwC quantitative trading lead and co-founder of Altura.trade, told Cointelegraph two explanations are circulating for the roughly 50% intraday wick seen on Revolut’s BTC chart.“The first is a data feed error,” he said. “It could be a corrupt tick pushed through Revolut’s pricing system, briefly anchoring the 1D chart at around $39,900 before correcting,” adding that, as Revolut is not an exchange and sources prices from external providers, a single bad data point could produce such a chart move.Arora added that an alternative explanation is a transient liquidity gap in a thin order book environment. “Revolut operates with limited liquidity depth compared to a full exchange,” he said. In such a scenario, a large sell order could temporarily exhaust available bids and print a sharp downside wick before recovery.However, he noted that the absence of matching prints across other venues makes a data error more likely, while any corresponding trades elsewhere would support the liquidity-gap hypothesis.Related: Bitcoin can crash to $50K if ‘most critical’ bear market test fails: AnalysisMarc Tillement, director of blockchain price oracle Pyth Data Association, said the episode highlights how fragile price perception can be in fragmented data environments, where “a single bad print can distort the perception of price very quickly,” especially in retail-facing systems.He added that as markets become increasingly continuous and data-driven, the reliability and provenance of pricing infrastructure become central to market trust, with participants depending on transparent, verifiable data layers to avoid distorted signals.A Revolut support message said the company was “currently experiencing issues affecting some of the app’s functionalities” and that engineers were working on a fix, urging customers to monitor its status page for updates.Revolut said it was working on the issue. Source: RevolutA spokesperson for Revolut confirmed that the incident had been rectified, telling Cointelegraph it was caused by a “service disruption at a third-party provider,” resulting in inaccurate pricing on the platform. They said the company was now evaluating the details of the disruption.Magazine: Bitcoin will not hit $1M by 2030, says veteran trader Peter BrandtCointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Tether has frozen more than $514 million in USDT across Ethereum and Tron over the past 30 days, according to onchain data from BlockSec’s USDT Freeze Tracker, highlighting the stablecoin issuer’s growing role in crypto-related enforcement actions.As of Friday, the tool shows 370 addresses blacklisted in that period, including 328 on Tron and 42 on Ethereum, with about $505.9 million frozen on Tron and $8.73 million on Ethereum. The figures indicate that most recent enforcement activity is concentrated on Tron and highlight how often the world’s largest stablecoin issuer is intervening onchain to immobilize funds flagged as high-risk or linked to investigations.The recent activity also builds on a pattern of increasingly frequent enforcement. BlockSec’s analysis of 2025 data found that Tether blacklisted 4,163 unique addresses across Ethereum and Tron, freezing a total of $1.26 billion in USDT. The current pace of freezes suggests Tether could exceed that total in blacklisted USDT well before the end of the year.Of the $1.26 billion of frozen assets in 2025, more than half (about $698 million) was later destroyed via the contracts’ “destroyBlackFunds” function, and only 3.6% of those addresses were subsequently removed from the blacklist, indicating that once imposed, freezes are rarely reversed. Tether blacklisting activity accelerates in 2026A separate study of 2023-2025 trends estimated that Tether immobilized roughly $3.3 billion across 7,268 addresses in those three years, far outpacing rival stablecoin issuer Circle over the same horizon.USDT Freeze Tracker. Source: BlockSecTether has also disclosed larger aggregate totals and detailed some of the cases behind them. In February, the company said it had frozen about $4.2 billion in tokens in three years over links to illicit activity, with some $3.5 billion of that amount locked since 2023 as authorities increased efforts to curb crypto-related crime.In April, Tether said it worked with the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and law enforcement agencies to freeze more than $344 million in USDT across two Tron addresses that US officials said were linked to suspected sanctions evasion involving Iran, while in February, Tether helped authorities to seize over $61 million in USDT linked to so-called pig butchering scams.Related: Tether reports $1.04B profit in Q1 as Treasury holdings reach $141BStablecoin blacklists fuel wider freeze debateThe growing scale of blacklisting and related seizures has fed into a broader debate over how far crypto issuers and protocols should go in stopping suspect flows.Some projects in decentralized finance, for example, have used upgradeable contracts and admin controls to halt or recover funds in major exploit cases, raising questions about who decides when such powers are used. In stablecoins, where issuers such as Tether retain direct control over minting and burning mechanisms, onchain data and enforcement disclosures show that blacklisting and freezes are now used regularly in fraud, sanctions and scam investigations.Tether and the Tron network did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s requests for comment.Market Moves: Why is Ethereum Foundation selling? BTC futures warning signsCointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Germany is preparing to change how it taxes Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from 2027, potentially ending one of Europe’s most generous long-term holding exemptions as it seeks to raise additional revenue and tighten tax compliance. Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil said at an April 29 press conference on the 2027 federal budget that the government wants to “tax cryptocurrencies differently,” and key points include an extra 2 billion euros (about $2.3 billion) in revenue from crypto taxation and measures against financial and tax crime. Under current rules, private crypto gains in Germany are taxable if the assets are sold within one year of acquisition, but are generally tax-free after that period. The exemption has made Germany one of the more favorable European jurisdictions for long-term Bitcoin and crypto holders.The finance ministry’s 2022 and 2025 guidance confirmed that this one-year “Haltefrist” also applies to coins used in staking and lending, after an earlier plan for 10 years was dropped. Tax advisory firms such as Blockpit describe the rule as a key advantage for German retail investors, especially long-term holders. Germany plans to “tax cryptocurrencies differently.” Source: BundesfinanzministeriumKlingbeil did not explicitly reference the holding period in his April remarks. However, industry groups, including the German Bitcoin Association, say the exemption is the most likely target if the government aims to generate significant revenue from crypto taxation.Related: Germany‘s central bank president touts stablecoin and CBDC benefits for EUBitcoin and crypto tax accountant Robin Thatcher told Cointelegraph that removing the 12-month tax-free disposal would “significantly weaken Germany’s pull as a crypto hub,” and that other jurisdictions “should be copying this policy rather than Germany changing it.”Cointelegraph reached out to Germany’s Federal Ministry of Finance for comment, but had not received a response by publication.EU transparency push and policy alignment The tax debate also comes as Germany prepares for broader crypto reporting under the EU’s DAC8 regime.Since January, Germany’s implementation of the EU’s DAC8 regime via the Crypto Asset Tax Transparency Act requires crypto asset service providers (CASPs) to report detailed customer transaction data to the Federal Central Tax Office and other EU authorities, dramatically reducing the scope for undeclared crypto trading.Austria, where Vienna-based crypto broker Bitpanda is headquartered, scrapped its own tax-free holding period for crypto in 2022 and moved to taxing gains as capital income regardless of how long coins are held. Abolishing Austria’s holding period “extremely stupid idea.” Source: Eric DemuthBitpanda co-founder Eric Demuth has since described Austria’s move as “an extremely stupid decision,” arguing in a March 12 X post that it created more bureaucracy and complexity for users and platforms while bringing “hardly any additional benefit” for the state and warning that Germany should not repeat the same mistake.Related: Bitget taps ex-Bitpanda legal chief Oliver Stauber to build Vienna MiCA hubThatcher said the change would put Germany “broadly in line with Austria,” with a 27.5% flat tax, and “not far” from the United Kingdom’s 24% top capital gains tax, causing Germany’s structural competitive edge to “disappear overnight.”Critics see tax push eroding Germany’s crypto appealA spokesperson from Bitpanda told Cointelegraph this is a “critical juncture for Germany’s digital economy.” Any reform should not be “a mere revenue exercise,” they said, especially since the gains to the state would be “negligible” at approximately 0.02% of the federal budget. They added that any new framework “must prioritize market competitiveness and prevent a migration of activity toward unregulated, offshore venues.”Thatcher said “the packaging matters,” and that the framing shows the motivation is fiscal rather than principled, “sitting inside a 98 billion euro deficit-reduction budget,” alongside cuts to health, pensions and levies on alcohol and tobacco. “Investors and entrepreneurs notice when they are bundled in with so-called sin taxes,” he said, “it shows how the state views the asset class.”Erald Ghoos, chief executive officer of OKX Europe, told Cointelegraph the plan would hurt Germany’s adoption and competitiveness “in one move,” pushing people toward offshore platforms “without [Markets in Crypto Assets] MiCA obligations.” He cited Austria as a failed example that created “compliance headaches for minimal revenue gain,” adding that MiCA has “done real work harmonizing regulation,” but that “Europe keeps losing ground” when it comes to taxation.Magazine: Bitcoin will not hit $1M by 2030, says veteran trader Peter BrandtCointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb is expanding its overseas push through a new partnership in Vietnam as the country moves toward licensing its first domestic digital asset trading platforms.Bithumb said it signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with SSI Digital (SSID), a subsidiary of Vietnam’s largest securities company, SSI Securities, to cooperate on establishing and operating a virtual asset exchange in the country. The agreement, signed in Hanoi in March but announced Thursday, also leaves the door open for Bithumb to make a strategic equity investment in an SSID-designated entity, subject to Vietnam’s regulatory approvals.The move positions Bithumb for Vietnam’s pilot program for licensed domestic digital asset trading platforms, creating a potential entry point into one of Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing crypto markets.Vietnam’s tight crypto pilot raceVietnam’s five-year crypto asset pilot, unveiled in September 2025, requires exchange operators to be Vietnamese entities with at least 10 trillion dong ($380 million), in charter capital and caps foreign ownership at 49%. Authorities are also drafting rules that could restrict trading on unlicensed overseas platforms.Bithumb and Vietnam’s SSID Collaborate. Source: BithumbCompetition for licenses is already intensifying. A Finance Ministry document cited by Reuters in March said five firms, including affiliates of private banks Techcombank, VPBank and LPBank, along with broker VIX Securities and conglomerate Sun Group, have already cleared an initial qualification round.Related: Bank of Korea floats crypto ‘circuit breakers’ after Bithumb blunderOne of the most advanced bids is VPBank-linked CAEX, which secured backing from OKX Ventures and HashKey Capital in April to help meet Vietnam’s minimum charter capital threshold for the pilot. Bithumb’s Vietnamese partner, SSI Securities, is one of the country’s largest brokers and set up SSI Digital Technology JSC to spearhead its push into digital assets in 2022. Vietnam was ranked fourth in global crypto adoption in 2025 by blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis. According to Bithumb’s press statement, the company and SSID plan to collaborate across exchange technology, wallet and custody systems, security and risk management, regulatory support and institutional business development. No timeline has been given for a formal license application or final investment decision, and Vietnam has not yet approved any fully licensed crypto exchange under the pilot. Cointelegraph reached out to Bithumb for comment but had not received a response by publication.Korea headwinds raise stakesThe expansion plan comes as Bithumb faces heightened scrutiny in its home country following a high-profile payout error and a delayed listing timeline. The exchange has pushed back its initial public offering (IPO) to sometime after 2028, with management saying it needs to strengthen accounting policies and internal controls after earlier regulatory sanctions.In February, Bithumb mistakenly credited customers with 620,000 Bitcoin instead of 620,000 won during a promotional event, briefly creating more than $40 billion in notional balances and triggering sharp price swings on the platform. The firm says it recovered 99.7% of the funds and is now pursuing legal action to reclaim the remaining 7 BTC.Magazine: Bitcoin will not hit $1M by 2030, says veteran trader Peter BrandtCointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.