The United States Securities and Exchange Commission will continue to pursue changes to the definition of “exchange” and alternative trading systems, Chair Gary Gensler told attendees of the US Treasury Market Conference on Sept. 26. Gensler was speaking about issues that affect the efficiency and resilience of the US Treasury bond market, but that proposal has been heavily…

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin wants to increase its “blob count” — introduced during its Dencun upgrade — to scale the network further and enable layer-2 protocols to boost capacity. In a discussion thread following its latest developer call, Buterin revealed that blob space is currently around 75% full, and changes need to be implemented via Ethereum Improvement…

Dubai’s digital asset regulator will adopt stricter requirements for companies marketing crypto investments in the country. In a press release sent to Cointelegraph, Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) announced that companies promoting digital asset investments in the country should add a disclaimer to their material. The crypto regulator said that the disclaimer must be…

Real-world asset (RWA) tokenization is an emerging concept that traces back to the advent of blockchain technology. The journey began with Bitcoin’s introduction in 2009, which unveiled a decentralized, secure, and transparent ledger system. This groundbreaking technology laid the foundation for turning physical assets into digital tokens recorded on a blockchain. However, the real leap forward…

BitcoinOS (BOS) has announced that it has open-sourced BitSNARK, a zero-knowledge (ZK) verification protocol for use on Bitcoin. BitSNARK is the first protocol to bring zk-SNARKs (Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge) to Bitcoin. According to a press release shared with Cointelegraph, the protocol enables privacy preservation in transactions and smart contracts on the blockchain without…

Global banking conglomerate Societe Generale has partnered with Bitpanda, to grow crypto and stablecoins into a key component of the global financial system. Bitpanda will work with the banking conglomerate’s blockchain subsidiary, Societe Generale-FORGE, to advance the mainstream adoption of its euro-denominated stablecoin EUR CoinVertible (EURCV). The partnership is a crucial step in making stablecoins…

Kraken has made another strategic acquisition to support its expansion across Europe. The crypto exchange has announced the closing of the Coin Meester (BCM) acquisition, one of the Netherlands’ oldest registered crypto broker firms. Through the acquisition, Kraken is now expanding its Dutch footprint and business with a registered virtual asset service provider (VASP) license…

Cardano’s Voltaire-era governance overhaul prevents it from becoming a “dictatorship” like Ethereum and sidesteps the “anarchy” of Bitcoin, its founder Charles Hoskinson said. Speaking to Cointelegraph at Token2049 in Singapore, Hoskinson attacked Ethereum’s governance model, claiming it relies too heavily on its co-founder Vitalik Buterin for direction. Hoskinson said that blockchains can elect to keep…

Bitcoin has been mislabelled as a “risk-on” asset, according to BlackRock’s head of digital assets, Robbie Mitchnick. “What’s happened a little bit in the crypto industry is a bit of an own goal,” said Mitchnick in an interview with Bloomberg on Sept. 24. “Some of the crypto research type publications and daily commentaries have taken the fact…

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has launched the second phase of the digital Hong Kong dollar (e-HKD) pilot study with 21 financial institutions working on 11 use cases for the central bank digital currency and tokenized deposits. In light of the broadening scope of the project, the HKMA is renaming it Project e-HKD+. The…