Autor Cointelegraph by Christina Comben

Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC) in Bhutan is offering an accelerated licensing pathway for crypto and fintech companies already regulated in hubs such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi, as the Himalayan territory pushes to position itself as a new South Asian financial center.The framework allows qualified companies to incorporate, obtain authorization from local regulators and open a corporate bank account through a coordinated process tied to DK Bank, GMC’s official banking partner, according to a Tuesday release shared with Cointelegraph.The move reflects growing competition among emerging jurisdictions seeking to attract crypto firms with streamlined regulation, banking access and tax incentives, as global regulators tighten oversight and warn against regulatory arbitrage.DK Bank will still run standard Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) checks, but Jigdrel Singay, a GMC board member and digital assets and fintech lead, told Cointelegraph that companies that clear the licensing process are expected to gain access to banking services through the coordinated framework. Singay stressed that the system is not a passport for offshore licenses and that firms must be authorized under GMC’s own rules.Existing approvals in other hubs mainly serve to streamline due diligence and cut down on duplicated documentation, he said, adding that regulatory standards and ongoing supervision remain under GMC’s control rather than being outsourced to foreign regulators, unlike the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework, which currently allows licensed firms to operate across the bloc.Related: Europe’s MiCA regime puts smaller crypto firms under pressureTax incentives and Bitcoin reserves underpin GMC’s pitchTax and incentives are another pillar of the pitch. GMC offers targeted 0% corporate tax for priority sectors depending on investment levels, a territorial tax system broadly aligned with Singapore and Hong Kong, and exemptions on capital gains, dividends and inheritance, according to the release.GMC’s Bitcoin Pledge. Source: GMCForeign employees can qualify for income tax breaks through 2030, and Singay said the aim is to encourage “real” operations and job creation rather than structures set up primarily to shift profits for tax purposes.The project is underwritten, at least in part, by Bitcoin (BTC). Bhutan announced a “Bitcoin Development Pledge” in late 2025, committing up to 10,000 BTC from sovereign reserves to support GMC’s long-term build-out, with officials emphasizing at the time that the assets would be held as a strategic reserve rather than sold.This year, however, blockchain analytics firms pointed to a series of large BTC outflows linked to Bhutan, suggesting hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of potential sales, including a further 100 BTC (roughly $8.1 million) flagged by Arkham Tuesday, though those analyses are based on address-tagging and transaction heuristics that are not definitive.Singay said reports of Bitcoin sales related to GMC were “incorrect” and said BTC remains pledged as part of the city’s strategic reserves.Market Moves: Why is Ethereum Foundation selling? BTC futures warning signs

Peter Thiel-backed payments startup Augustus received conditional approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a US national bank built around artificial intelligence and stablecoin-based payments.The approval, announced Monday, would allow Augustus to expand its existing European banking operations into the US, as financial firms increasingly compete to modernize cross-border settlement infrastructure using tokenized dollars and blockchain-based payment systems.The company describes Augustus National Bank as “the first clearing bank for the AI era,” built on an AI and stablecoin-native core designed to interact directly with machine agents at “the speed of compute,” rather than relying on batch processes and human clerks.Founded in 2022, Augustus operates under European banking licences and says it already processes billions of dollars for institutional clients, including cryptocurrency exchange Kraken. Its proposed US national bank charter, however, is still at the conditional approval stage and will only become effective once the OCC’s pre-opening requirements are satisfied.Augustus secures OCC conditional approval. Source: PR NewswireRelated: Stablecoin issuer Circle faces lawsuit over $280M Drift Protocol hackWhile companies such as Ripple and Circle have pursued national trust bank charters under the OCC framework, only a limited number of digital asset firms have reached comparable advanced stages in the federal chartering process. The OCC approval places Augustus among a small group of companies that have progressed toward a national bank charter in recent years, according to the release. Race to build the stablecoin bankThe move comes as competition intensifies to modernize cross-border payments and stablecoin settlement infrastructure in the US. Under the Guiding and Establishing Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act regime for payment stablecoins, banks and trust companies can issue fully reserved dollar tokens, and a growing group of issuers and payments companies are testing ways to integrate tokenized dollar flows into regulated banking rails.Circle’s collaboration with core banking provider Finastra in August 2025, for example, lets banks settle cross-border payments in USDC via Finastra’s Global PAYplus hub, and Citi and HSBC introduced live tokenized deposit services for 24/7 cross-border and interbank payments in November 2025.Augustus, backed by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Creandum, and the founders of companies including Ramp and Deel, has raised about $40 million, according to the company. At 25, Dabitz would be the youngest chief executive of a federally chartered bank in over 100 years.Cointelegraph reached out to Augustus for comment, but had not received a response by publication.Asia Express: North Korea denies crypto hacks, Upbit’s bank tests Ripple

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.