Autor Cointelegraph by Zoltan Vardai

Bernstein analysts expect “aggressive and swift” rulemaking from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), after the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act failed to pass a Senate cloture vote on Tuesday.Bernstein analysts said the regulatory agencies will publish new regulations to “make up for the time lost negotiating the CLARITY Act,” in a Wednesday note shared with Cointelegraph.The analysts said they expect agency regulations including token taxonomy for raising capital, developer protection measures concerning decentralized finance and self-custodial protocols, innovation exemptions for equity tokenization, faster approval times for real-world asset perpetual futures, and amendments to rules around federal sports even contracts and their classification as swaps.Bernstein said that these federal agencies will bring more regulatory clarity for the industry, to compensate for the failure of the CLARITY Act, which would have “fool-proofed the industry against political regime shifts.” On Tuesday, the US Senate failed to pass a cloture motion on the CLARITY Act, which would have established the country’s first regulatory framework for digital assets. Bernstein’s analysts said that a re-vote of the act was unlikely, citing a limited time window and concerns over the bill’s ethics provisions.On Aug. 19, the SEC proposed new rules to create a “clear and fit-for-purpose framework for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets,” allowing entities to raise capital while preserving investor protections. The proposed rules offer crypto companies exemptions allowing the issuance of up to $5 million in tokens during four years and up to $75 million during 12 months, as well as a safe harbor exempting cryptocurrencies from being treated as ”investment contracts.”On July 27, SEC Chair Paul Atkins told CNBC that the agency was “ready, willing, and able to come out with rules“ on digital assets if the Senate failed to pass the CLARITY Act. Related: Deutsche Bank awaits regulatory nod to launch institutional crypto custody solutionsCointelegraph 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.

Zcash token holders backed cutting the network’s target block time to 25 seconds from 75 seconds and preserving its existing halving schedule in a poll on the next major upgrade.The faster-block proposal received 99.9% of the Zcash (ZEC)-weighted vote, while 98.9% supported keeping halvings, according to results published Monday. Voting power reflected eligible ZEC holdings, with both percentages including abstentions.The shorter interval would reduce the expected wait for a transaction’s first confirmation, according to the proposal. The amount of new ZEC issued per block would fall to keep scheduled daily issuance unchanged.The changes are proposed for NU7, a Zcash network upgrade whose activation date remains undetermined. Token holders also favored excluding features not implemented by Sept. 30.Results of the NU7 sentiment poll. Source: forum.zcashcommunity.com The coinholder vote was separate from polls of ZecHub, the Zcash Community Advisory Panel and other community groups. Eligibility was limited to spendable ZEC in the Ironwood shielded pool at the voting snapshot. Developers plan to ship the final items for the upgrade by the Sept. 30 cut-off deadline, with testnet and mainnet activation not yet determined.Halvings are scheduled cuts that reduce the issuance of new ZEC by half. The winning coinholder option would preserve that schedule while allowing funds removed from circulation under a separate proposal to be returned through future block rewards.The advisory-panel results showed a closer split, with 57 members favoring a gradual issuance curve that would replace halvings and 54 favoring keeping them.Related: Anthropic’s Mythos AI finds no more ‘serious’ bugs in Zcash: WilcoxZcash coinholders favor delaying reissuanceAnother major feature considered for NU7 inclusion was the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM), a proposed upgrade to Zcash’s economic model that aims to recycle a portion of transaction fees back into a pool, rather than relying solely on block rewards.About 97% of token holders voted to delay NSM reissuance until February 2031, with 2.3 million ZEC tokens voting to delay the motion, while only about 70,239 tokens voted to start it as soon as possible.NSM was proposed in January in response to the network’s long-term security budget concerns, as the declining block rewards may eventually be insufficient to incentivize miners to validate transactions. The model’s three-part mechanism seeks to burn and recycle 60% of ZEC transaction fees into future block rewards, without exceeding the token’s 21 million maximum supply.ZEC rose 3.8% in the past 24 hours, extending its 132% rally seen during the past month, according to CoinMarketCap data.Magazine: The legal battle over who can claim DeFi’s stolen millions 

Germany’s largest bank, Deutsche Bank, is awaiting regulatory approval to launch digital asset custody solutions for institutional clients and corporations in Europe. Deutsche Bank plans to go live with the offering for its first clients this year, subject to completion of the applicable regulatory timeline, the bank announced on Wednesday.The bank plans to offer initial support for Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and select stablecoins, including Circle USDC (USDC), EURC (EURC) and AllUnity EUR (EURAU). It also plans to include support for tokenized financial instruments at a later point.Deutsche Bank is one of the institutions listed by the Financial Stability Board as a Global Systemically Important Bank, The development marks the German institution’s latest push into crypto, confirming earlier reports that it was developing crypto custody services. In June, Deutsche Bank’s head of digital assets, Sabih Behzad, revealed that the bank was considering entering the stablecoin market, including issuing its own token. The bank expects to receive the license for the custody offering in October, under the EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) framework, Heinrich Frömsdorf, a spokesperson for Deutsche Bank, told Cointelegraph. German banks ink partnerships to pursue crypto servicesThe push to pursue crypto services is expected to accelerate after MiCA reached full enforcement on July 1. Deutsche Bank first revealed plans to launch crypto custody solutions in 2023, as part of a partnership with Taurus, soon after applying for a digital asset custody license in Germany. Other German banks are also offering similar solutions. In April 2024, Germany’s largest federal bank, the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, started offering crypto custody solutions after partnering with the Austria-based Bitpanda for its institutional custody platform.In December 2025, DZ Bank said it received authorization from German regulator BaFin under MiCA to operate its meinKrypto platform. Related: USDT payments feature in Polish energy giant’s failed $230M oil deal: FT

The world’s largest stablecoin by market cap, Tether’s USDt, was reportedly used in a failed Venezuelan oil trade that cost Poland’s largest energy giant $230 million in late 2023, according to the Financial Times.That was after the Caracas-based state oil company, PDVSA, began demanding partial payments in USDT as a workaround to US financial sanctions.The $230 million was an advance payment paid largely in Tether USDt (USDT) in an oil trade orchestrated by Samer Awad, a former executive at Orlen Trading Switzerland (OTS), a trading subsidiary of Poland’s state-controlled energy giant, Orlen, to acquire 6 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil in November 2023 from state-owned PDVSA, the news outlet reported on Tuesday. Orlen sent the $230 million advance payment to Hannon International Middle East, the Dubai-based seller, on Dec. 4, 2023. Hannon approached various crypto brokers and intermediaries to obtain the USDT necessary to buy the crude oil, but most funds disappeared into a maze of crypto transfers, while Orlen only received about $29 million worth of oil before eventually terminating the contract. Cointelegraph has approached Tether and Orlen for comment on the matter.“Hannon became involved in the transaction at Orlen’s request” and was not responsible for the “transaction’s failure,” David McCoy, managing partner at ADG Legal Abu Dhabi, the legal representative of Hannon, told Cointelegraph.“Hannon has since taken significant steps, at its own expense, to recover the funds paid in connection with the transaction and remains open to a constructive dialogue with Orlen about resolving this matter amicably.” Payment flows that led to the $230 million loss. Source: Financial TimesTracing missing $230 million through crypto intermediariesAfter Orlen wired the $230 million in December 2023, Hannon reportedly obtained $80 million USDT, paying a $400,000 commission, from a Dubai-based financial services company he previously dealt with.Hannon later sent Dubai-based Horizon Global $135 million, but claimed it only received $85 million in USDT, leaving a $50 million shortfall. Horizon has contested these claims.Hannon also said it sent Dubai-incorporated Gold Mar International Trading $30 million, expecting a USDT conversion and onward payment for the oil to PDVSA. Hannon said it later recovered $21 million of the USDT from Gold Mar in February 2024.In January 2024, Hannon employees reportedly gave a Caracas broker two USB sticks, containing $60 million and $50 million USDT, respectively. The next month, it gave access to $11 million in USDT to another Caracas broker.Related: Fragmented regulations limit stablecoin adoption in international finance: WTO headOn March 8, Orlen’s ship was finally loaded with about 500,000 barrels of fuel oil, worth only about $28.8 million. The same day, another $11 million in USDT was allegedly handed to the broker. Orlen Trading Services finally terminated the contract with Hannon on March 28, 2024, after only receiving a fraction of the crude oil.In January 2025, the Warsaw Regional Prosecutor’s Office announced an investigation into the oil contracts related to Orlen Trading Services, for damages of 1.5 billion Polish zloty ($378 million). McCoy told Cointelegraph that Hannon “is not involved in the investigation in Poland and therefore cannot comment on it.” In August 2026, three former managers at Orlen and Orlen Trading Services were reportedly indicted over crude oil contracts that caused $378 million in damages, according to Reuters. The managers, identified under Polish privacy laws by last initial, have all denied wrongdoing. The trio, Michal R., a former member of Orlen’s management board, Marcin O., a former member of OTS’ board, ​and Filip ​W, a ⁠former executive at Orlen and OTS, face up to 25 years in prison.Magazine: Inside the ‘fake police raid’ that forced a $1M Bitcoin transfer

Ethereum and Base are set to implement different account abstraction standards after efforts to agree on a shared account abstraction standard broke down last week.Interoperability standards became secondary to each chain’s core goals, leading both to go their separate ways and “putting the burden on wallets,” Derek Chiang, founding member and researcher at Ethlabs, as well as a co-author of Ethereum’s EIP-8141 proposal, said in a Monday X post.The divergence could require wallet developers to support separate transaction formats to provide a consistent experience across networks. Account abstraction allows programmable rules for authorizing transactions and paying fees. Ethereum is now advancing Frame Transactions under EIP-8141 as a “headliner” item under its Hegotá upgrade, which would introduce native account abstraction and create a path toward post-quantum authentication. Separately, Base is developing native account abstraction via Keystore under EIP-8130, currently live on devnet.The divergence also highlights different priorities between layer-1 and layer-2 blockchain networks. Chiang said L1s are increasingly focused on censorship, capture-resistance, open-source, privacy and security features, favoring different account standards, while scalability-focused L2s are more aligned with standards such as EIP-8130.The researcher argued that the separation won’t necessarily result in a bad outcome, as both Ethereum and Base are now “free to innovate on AA to the maximal extent in accordance with their own visions.” Ethereum developers could begin implementing Hegotá in late 2026 following Glamsterdam, arguably one of the most consequential upgrades of the year. Glamsterdam is designed to improve scalability, harden the L1, and make the network easier to use, with a mainnet launch expected sometime in the second half of 2026, according to Ethereum’s public roadmap.  Related: Standard Chartered forecasts SKY rising fivefold to $0.325 by 2028Cointelegraph 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.