
On September 17, 2026, the SEC introduced a five-year Innovation Exemption framework, creating a temporary regulatory pathway for eligible tokenized U.S. stocks to trade onchain. Qualified tokenized securities trading venues may match tokenized trades in National Market System stocks through permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools without registering as exchanges, subject to conditions. Liquidity providers also receive limited conditional relief. The policy does not permit unrestricted tokenization of any U.S. stock: tokenized shares must grant investors the same voting and dividend rights as traditional shares, and price-tracking synthetic tokens do not qualify. The article argues this is essentially a regulated market structure experiment.
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The Wall Street Journal reports that ECB President Christine Lagarde personally pressured Greece's prime minister to reject Binance's Greek MiCA license application. Binance withdrew its bid on June 24 before regulators formally rejected it. Lagarde reportedly cited concerns over Binance's prior U.S. criminal case and stablecoin risks. Binance remains absent from the EU's authorized CASP registry and is exploring other licensing routes. Under MiCA, crypto licenses are still issued by national authorities, while ESMA supervisory reforms remain under negotiation.
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Crypto.com's North American derivatives exchange, Nadex, filed a Form 1-N notice with the SEC on September 14, effective the same day, allowing it to operate as a national securities exchange for security futures. Nadex remains CFTC-regulated as a designated contract market and clearing organization. Crypto.com says it is working with both regulators to advance U.S. single-stock perpetual futures, though the notice itself does not approve any specific contracts. Coinbase, Kalshi, Bitnomial, and CME took similar steps in 2026.
4 hours ago

Security experts from the US and China have jointly proposed banning AI from independently launching cyberattacks on nuclear command systems or deciding to use nuclear weapons. They call on both nations to extend the principle of human control to military AI and to establish a military AI hotline and a shared definition of human control. The report, released by the Brookings Institution and Fudan University, warns that the speed and unpredictability of AI in military decision-making could trigger a nuclear crisis. It also cites test results showing AI models resorting to nuclear weapons in war simulations, as well as the controversy between Anthropic and the Pentagon.
9 hours ago

The US Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act in a 50-49 vote, falling short of the 60 needed to begin formal debate. Three industry experts say the setback leaves crypto firms without a federal market structure framework, potentially delaying product launches, funding decisions, and business partnerships. The Decentralization Research Center is urging the SEC and CFTC to use existing authority to provide clear guidance, while Paybis recommends separate compliance checks where US and EU stablecoin requirements diverge. Despite the bill's failure, Congress is still seen as the best path to a comprehensive market structure framework.
11 hours ago

StablecoinX disclosed on Sept. 17 that it signed a waiver with Ethena OpCo and the Ethena Foundation to permanently remove the 48-month lock-up, vesting, and phased release restrictions on its ENA tokens starting Oct. 5, 2026, aligning with unlock dates the Ethena Foundation previously announced for other holders. However, StablecoinX must still hold its ENA as unencumbered treasury assets, and any sale, transfer, lending, hedging, or staking requires prior written consent from the Ethena Foundation, with five business days' notice required before using ENA for a financing sale.
12 hours ago

On September 17, the CFTC's Market Participants Division issued a no-action position (Staff Letter 26-25) granting conditional broker registration relief to qualifying passive crypto software providers. The relief covers software that connects users with registered derivatives exchanges, brokers, and futures commission merchants, provided ten conditions are met, including filing notice and submitting to CFTC enforcement jurisdiction. The move follows the SEC's earlier five-year exemption for tokenized equity trading venues, but it is not a formal exemption under the Commodity Exchange Act and does not offer blanket protection to all developers.
13 hours ago

Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang is urging Congress to regulate frontier AI models, proposing liability rules, deployment waiting periods, and a "kill switch" for powerful AI systems. Citing incidents disclosed by OpenAI and Anthropic and a proposed AI Kill Switch Act, he says AI safety concerns are real and bipartisan, and criticizes the industry's near-total lack of oversight.
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On September 17, King Charles III convened executives from Nvidia, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind at Dumfries House in Scotland for an AI safety summit, urging that artificial intelligence be made to "firmly serve humanity." Organized by the Ditchley Foundation and the King's charity, the meeting included the UK's AI minister. Participants discussed whether industry and government could agree on guiding principles for AI development, but no binding agreements were reached. Days earlier, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an article calling for a deliberate slowdown in model capability advancement, drawing public support from OpenAI's Sam Altman and xAI's Elon Musk.
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The UK's Financial Conduct Authority, working with HMRC and the Metropolitan Police, took enforcement action on September 10 against three London sites suspected of illegal peer-to-peer crypto trading, issuing cease-and-desist orders. The FCA says no P2P crypto business is currently registered in the UK, meaning all such operators are unlicensed and vulnerable to money laundering by criminals. The FCA's enforcement chief warned unlicensed operators to assume they are being watched. The article also notes the FCA previously prosecuted an illegal crypto ATM network and that a new UK crypto regulatory regime will take effect on October 25, 2027.
15 hours ago