Tag: cryptocurrency

Japan’s Parliament Reclassifies Bitcoin and Crypto as Financial Assets Under FIEA

Japan’s parliament passed an amendment on Wednesday that reclassifies cryptocurrency as a “financial asset,” a shift that pulls bitcoin and other digital assets out of the country’s payments regime and into the framework that governs stocks, bonds, and investment trusts, according to a report from public broadcaster NHK [1]. The change strips crypto of its prior status under the Payment Services Act, where regulators treated it as a means of settlement, and folds it into the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (FIEA), the same statute that oversees traditional securities [2].

The change takes effect within a year, with a target of fiscal 2027, NHK reported [1]. The move brings digital assets under the same investor-protection standard as stocks and bonds, according to the report [1].

Details of the Regulatory Shift

The amendment strips crypto of its prior status under the Payment Services Act and folds it into FIEA, the statute overseeing traditional securities, according to NHK [1]. As financial instruments, crypto assets now fall under insider-trading rules that bar trading on non-public information about token listings, delistings, or technical incidents [3]. Exchanges face new disclosure obligations: platforms must publish data on each token’s issuer, blockchain design, and volatility profile, mirroring securities-firm reporting demands [1].

Penalties increase under the new law. The maximum prison term for unregistered crypto operators rises from three years to 10, while the top fine increases from 3 million yen to 10 million yen, according to reports [1]. The tougher enforcement “signals a move to treat crypto misconduct with the same severity as securities fraud,” the NHK report stated [1]. Regulators also gain broader market-surveillance authority over the sector, according to Ava Grace of NaturalNews.com [2]. The amendments address a regulatory gap that previously left investors vulnerable to abuses such as trading on advance knowledge, Grace wrote [2].

Implications for Bitcoin ETFs and Tax Treatment

The reclassification opens a path for spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds because FIEA governs the products that funds can hold, removing a structural barrier for Japanese asset managers, according to the NHK report [1]. Industry observers noted that the change could attract institutional capital that was previously blocked by regulatory ambiguity [1].

Lawmakers also approved a plan to cut the top tax rate on crypto gains from 55% to a flat 20% starting in 2028, tied to the 2026 Tax Reform Outline, the report stated [1]. The reduction matches the tax rate on stock gains, officials said [1].

Broader Context and Industry Response

The reforms arrive as Japan accelerates a broader Web3 push, user accounts on Japanese exchanges have grown, and domestic crypto firms are positioning for a wider base of retail investors, according to local media [1]. Regulators are weighing reserve requirements for exchanges that resemble buffers held by securities firms, the reports said [1]. The vote marks a decisive turn toward legitimacy for an industry that has long viewed Japan as an early and cautious mover, according to industry observers [1].

The regulatory approach aligns with Japan’s history of providing a framework that encourages cryptocurrency adoption while protecting consumers, as noted in the book “Cryptocurrency QuickStart Guide” [5]. The same source stated that countries like Japan have implemented frameworks that encourage cryptocurrency development [5]. At the same time, the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies — operating on a peer-to-peer network without a central authority — challenges traditional regulatory mechanisms [4]. Japan’s stance on privacy tokens has been restrictive, as it has banned privacy tokens altogether, according to Shermin Voshmgir in “Token Economy” [6].

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Mysterious pay-for-play antisemitism attacks now targeting Canada. Who benefits?

A wave of strange property attacks targeting Jewish sites in Canada is attributed to apolitical youth paid in crypto. The violence follows the same playbook seen in Australia and the UK. While Iran and Palestine solidarity campaigners are blamed, Israel exploits the tension.

Canada is the latest in a string of nations to attribute a wave of high-profile but mostly low-consequence attacks to a mysterious online “gun-for-hire” plot. If Canada follows the pattern set in Australia, Europe and the UK, the “foreign entity” its government is already blaming for orchestrating the petty violence will be identified as Iran. 

According to the Toronto Star, “Police believe that several young people have been hired to carry out shootings throughout the city and the wider GTA, including the U.S. consulate shooting, shootings at synagogues and Jewish schools, as well as shootings targeting the waste management company GFL Environmental.”

But there’s another nation with a history of hiring locals to perpetrate crimes, employing low-level violence to poison third-party bilateral relationships, fanning anti-semitism to justify its own carnage, and using local Jewish populations as pawns. 

It is Israel, which happens to be the only nation to have extracted any political benefit for the growing wave of pay-for-play attacks on Jewish targets in the West.

Canadian police say consulate, synagogue shootings are linked to shooter-for-hire network

Canadian police recently announced that they believe many of the recent attacks on synagogues and other apparently unrelated targets are actually the work of paid criminal elements. 

On June 16, police in Toronto said at least 27 shootings in the Greater Toronto Area appeared to be the work of a gun-for-hire network, in which mostly young men were recruited over encrypted messaging apps like Whatsapp to commit disparate acts of violence for which they’d be paid $1,000 in cryptocurrency. The gunmen film themselves committing the crimes as proof for their paymasters, they say. 

Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw declared, “What we know is that bad actors are using criminal elements in our city to carry out these dangerous incidents” and that “it is clear that some of the people hiring these criminals want to create a sense of fear in our communities, including in the Jewish community.” 

According to Demkiw, the identity of the person or group behind the attack was still a matter under investigation. However, Canadian Secretary of State for Combating Crime Ruby Sahota seems to have narrowed it down somewhat. She said on June 17 that “the shooters were paid and hired by a foreign entity.”

This is not the first time a foreign entity has been accused of orchestrating small scale attacks in a Commonwealth nation.  

Tip from Israel leads Australian authorities to blame Iran for 2024 fire bombings

Last year, Australia came to the conclusion that a foreign entity was behind two fire bombings that occurred in late 2024, one at a kosher restaurant in Sydney and one at Adas Israel Synagogue in Melbourne – one of the few non-Zionist congregations in the country. The attacks generated outrage and were immediately attributed to antisemitism. 

However, Australian authorities soon determined that “overseas actors” were instigating the attacks, and that the perpetrators were not antisemites, but paid dupes.

Two men were arrested last summer in connection with the attacks, and a third on June 19. 

In August 2025, the Australian government declared that Iran had been behind the attacks, with the head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization investigation saying a “painstaking investigation” had “uncovered and unpicked the links between the alleged crimes and the commanders in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC.”

This was difficult, as ASIO Director General Mike Burgess said Iran had used a “complex web of proxies to hide its involvement” in both antisemitic attacks.

Only later did it emerge that Israel had provided a tip that pointed Australian investigators in Tehran’s direction. The Australian intelligence service insists they arrived at their conclusions independently, but have so far been unwilling to present any hard evidence to back that assertion up.

The young men allegedly hired to commit the crime probably won’t be much help with the international side of the investigation, as Australian police say the actual perpetrators of the crime might not be aware of who had ordered it. So far, though the men are being charged by the Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team, none have been charged with terrorism. At least one was released on bail, which prosecutors argued against because of what they called an extensive criminal history, including armed robberies and violent assaults.  

A third man was charged with arson on Friday in connection with the synagogue attack. He was already in jail for other offences the police so far won’t comment on. 

If these men are anything like the pair arrested in connection with a caravan packed with explosives and a list of synagogues, they’ll turn out to be criminal ne’er-do-wells with debts and perhaps disabilities, who “wouldn’t have the brains” to plan an attack on their own – hardly a dangerous, organic surge of anti-semitism. 

That hasn’t stopped the Australian government from using the bombings as justification for expelling Iran’s ambassador and declaring the IRGC a terrorist organization, paving the way for the US-Israeli assault on Iran this February 28.

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Trump made $1 billion from crypto, financial disclosure shows

President Donald Trump earned more than $1 billion from his cryptocurrency ventures, according to his personal financial disclosure released on Tuesday.

The personal financial disclosure showed that the president earned at least $524 million from the sale of cryptocurrency tokens through the Trump-connected World Liberty Financial.

The president’s disclosure also listed earnings of an additional $636 million from CIC Digital LLC, an affiliate of the Trump Organization — the majority of which came from a $635 million licensing agreement with Celebration Coin for the sale of the president’s $TRUMP meme coin.

The more than 900-page document lists several of the president’s assets and sources of income.

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US Senate Passes Housing Bill With CBDC Ban Until 2030

The US Senate has passed housing legislation that includes a ban on the Federal Reserve creating or working on a central bank digital currency (CBDC) until 2030, which is expected to be quickly taken up and passed by the House.

The Senate on Monday voted 85-5 to pass the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, which aims to increase the housing supply after a bipartisan group of House and Senate leaders reached a deal last week to move forward with the legislation. 

The bill has included a CBDC ban since the Senate first passed a version of the bill in March, which outlines that the Fed may not, directly or indirectly, “issue or create a central bank digital currency or any digital asset that is substantially similar to a central bank digital currency.”

Crypto advocates have long criticized CBDCs, which they see as an attempt by governments to bring digital currency under central bank control, and the bill is set to be a win for Republicans who have for years attempted to ban CBDCs.

The bill will now be sent to the House for a vote, where it is expected to pass quickly with the deal struck by House leaders last week, before it’s then sent to the president to sign it into law.

The CBDC clause in the bill became wrapped into the housing package as a political sweetener to secure support from House Republicans and the administration for faster passage.

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Crypto’s next billion-dollar hacker may move at superhuman speed

Anthropic’s new Claude Fable 5 puts powerful cyber tools behind safety filters. DeFi, already hit by more than $840 million in hacks this year, is one of the industries with the most to lose if the filters fail.

The newest AI model from Anthropic, which gives users access to stronger, faster reasoning and coding capabilities, lands in a crypto market beset by security problems and could well exacerbate them.

The company released Claude Fable 5 on Tuesday, the first public model in the Mythos class and, Anthropic says, its most powerful yet. So powerful, in fact, the company released two versions: one for widespread use and the other for more restricted distribution.

The public version sports stronger reasoning and coding ability while blocking the most dangerous uses. A less-hamstrung counterpart, Claude Mythos 5, is available only to vetted users in cybersecurity and critical infrastructure.

Experts say Mythos can find and chain zero-day vulnerabilities, or previously unknown software flaws, and help turn a bug into a working attack. Anthropic says the software tries to intercept possible attack vectors by detecting high-risk requests. Once identified, they are routed to a weaker model, Claude Opus 4.8.

The company says this specific fallback triggers in fewer than 5% of sessions. It also said in a blog post that specialized cybersecurity teams and more than 1,000 hours of external bug-bounty work found no universal way of breaking the system.

Still, Anthropic recognizes that the system is unlikely to be foolproof and says it expects determined, well-funded attackers to keep trying because the capability is valuable.

“The uplift from Mythos-level capabilities is valuable to many adversaries—for instance, those who could financially gain from cyberattacks—and we therefore expect them to be motivated to try to circumvent our safety measures,” the firm said in the post.

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‘This Has to Be Stopped’: Alarm As Trump’s Crypto Firm Set to Get Federal Banking Privileges

Critics expressed alarm on Tuesday amid a new report suggesting that President Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency firm is about to get federal banking privileges.

As reported by NOTUS, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in the coming weeks is expected to approve a national trust bank charter for World Liberty Financial, the crypto startup founded by members of the Trump family and the family of Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Were it to receive the charter, NOTUS explained, World Liberty Financial would receive “significant legal and financial benefits,” including being able “to settle financial transactions akin to Venmo or PayPal on the World Liberty Financial platform, through which the Trump family could receive a cut.”

David Wachsman, a spokesperson for World Liberty Financial, dismissed concerns about conflicts of interest, telling NOTUS that “none of [the company’s] leadership or employees work for the US government,” even though the president and his entire family stand to personally benefit from the charter’s approval.

Corey Frayer, director of investor protection for Consumer Federation of America, told NOTUS that here was simply no precedent for a sitting president being granted such privileges for a company he founded by a comptroller whom he personally appointed.

“For the first time in history, a president is leaning on a bank regulator to give his private enterprise the implicit backing of the federal government,” Frayer explained. “It’s outrageous.”

Diana Henriques, a veteran financial journalist best known for her extensive coverage of the Ponzi scheme run by disgraced financier Bernie Madoff, also expressed horror at the prospect of the OCC carrying out the president’s bidding.

“The guardrails continue to fall,” Henriques wrote. “It is functionally impossible to regulate a bank owned by the president. Yet it can imperil the entire banking system if it runs off the rails. For heaven’s sake, this has to be stopped.”

Derek Martin, vice president at Focal Point Strategy Group, wrote that there is “no other way to interpret” the NOTUS report “than Trump using the government to advance his own firm’s interests.”

“World Liberty Financial’s entire brand—and reason for existence, basically—is ‘We are affiliated with Trump,’” Martin added. “This is just the latest way they’re leveraging it.”

Government watchdogs for months have been raising alarms about the president having his own cryptocurrency firm, which has received massive investments from foreign governments since its founding in 2024.

According to NOTUS reporter Jeff Stein, Trump has reported personally earning $57 million from World Liberty Financial so far, a number that could get significantly higher if the firm is granted its charter.

An analysis published by Forbes last month estimated that Trump has nearly tripled his wealth since returning to office, going from a net worth of $2.3 billion in 2024 to $6.5 billion in 2026.

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AI Agents With Crypto Could Escape And Become ‘Unstoppable’, Experts Warn

Artificial intelligence agents that have autonomous access to crypto wallets could become unstoppable if deployed maliciously or if they escape from sandboxes, experts from a leading academic research consortium warned.

Unstoppable Autonomous Agents” (UAAs) pose a clear threat if they are deployed to persist automatically and have access to digital assets, according to a June 8 industry review written by 25 academics and experts from top US universities for the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3).

“When combined systematically, crypto tools can channel AI’s fluid power into secure, reliable, and highly autonomous systems,” the researchers wrote.

However, this combination could have “far-reaching consequences for users and the financial system,” they added. 

UAAs may also be equipped with access to cryptocurrency wallets, social media accounts, APIs, and other external tools, said the researchers.

“The capabilities enabling such agents are already emerging and improving rapidly.” 

The warning comes as crypto projects and executives have been pushing the agentic payment and micropayment economy narrative this year, suggesting it could be the biggest use case for decentralized digital assets. 

AI self-replication alarm bells

The paper also revealed that existing models can already “surpass self-replication red lines” in local environments, by autonomously creating a live, separate copy of themselves on the same machine, “a capability that could let a system evade shutdown and proliferate.”

Because reward signals used in training often fail to perfectly capture the intended objectives, “UAAs deployed for benign purposes may inadvertently cause harm,” or pursue resource acquisition as a default strategy, they said. 

However, the authors noted that models have yet to replicate themselves onto external infrastructure.

Potential AI agent insider trading advantages 

A fleet of self-replicating, resource-acquiring agents could also create unpredictable demand and liquidity dynamics in crypto markets. 

“AI-powered trading systems could enable collusion between autonomous agents and create unfair insider advantages through opaque strategies.”

The tech sector is already dealing with difficult questions about the threat of unmitigated AI. 

Models such as Anthropic’s Claude Mythos have already been shown to be capable of finding and exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in major operating systems. 

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Short-Term Bitcoin Holders Are Realizing Their Largest Losses On Record; Most Oversold Since 2018 Collapse

Bitcoin is now flashing its most oversold signal since 2018, raising the odds of a relief rebound toward $70,000 in the coming weeks.

The extremely oversold reading followed a roughly 30% decline in BTC over the past month, as geopolitical risks, higher oil prices, fading hopes for a 2026 Federal Reserve rate cut, and panic over Strategy’s latest Bitcoin sale weighed on sentiment.

In addition, there was some online chatter seems to speculate that retail investors may be selling crypto to chase the biggest IPO ever.

The Elon Musk-owned rockets, satellite and AI company SpaceX is selling up to 30% of its record $75 billion offering straight to retail investors through Robinhood, Fidelity and Charles Schwab, more than three times the slice a typical IPO sets aside for individuals.

The roadshow opened Thursday already oversubscribed, with more orders than shares on offer, Bloomberg reported. It is offering shares at a $1.8 trillion valuation.

Bitcoin fell roughly 16% over the same timespan and briefly traded below $60,000 before recovering to around $61,000.

Oversold readings this extreme often appear near seller-exhaustion zones where short-term buyers begin positioning for a relief rebound.

In 2018, the collapse was triggered in large part by the SEC’s regulatory crackdown on ICOs, announcing its first civil penalties against Paragon and CarrierEQ/Airfox. But, the 2018 bear market was already underway due to the bursting of the 2017 ICO bubble, regulatory uncertainty (China bans, etc.), exchange hacks, and fading retail hype. November was more of a capitulation phase than a new shock.

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63 Arrested, Crypto Millions Frozen As FBI, DOJ Team Up With Meta, Coinbase And Starlink To Bust Scammers

More than 1 million scam-related online accounts were taken down, and millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency were frozen, as part of a crackdown on Southeast Asian scam networks.

The crackdown operations, conducted by U.S. and international agencies led by the Department of Justice (DOJ), began on May 18, when the DOJ’s Scam Center Strike Force brought together the FBI, Royal Thai Police, and law enforcement agencies from Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand to identify and disrupt criminal scam networks.

Meta, Microsoft, Starlink, and Coinbase were part of joint operations held in Washington and Bangkok, Meta said in a June 3 statement.

“More than a million online assets were disrupted as a result of the operation – including 1.4 million accounts, pages, and groups across Facebook and Instagram, 20,000 Microsoft accounts, and thousands of Starlink kits – and the Royal Thai Police has arrested 63 individuals involved in scam operations,” Meta said.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase “froze more than $3 million in cryptocurrency assets tied to criminal networks.” In addition, Starlink “terminated connectivity for thousands of Starlink kits that were attributed to unlawful use,” it said.

Criminal syndicates behind the fraud have exploited millions of people globally via romance scams and investment fraud, and through utilizing forced labor. This makes coordinated disruption critical to protecting people, Meta said.

FBI Director Kash Patel thanked Meta for the company’s assistance in a June 3 post on X, and said the operation was “just the beginning!”

The DOJ said that the joint initiative interrupted malicious network connections hosted by scammers. Moreover, servers and hosting infrastructure associated with the scam networks in Southeast Asia were decommissioned.

Many scam centers are run from Laos, Cambodia, and Burma along the border with Thailand, across several industrial-scale compounds.

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Senate Returns To CLARITY Act Debate Amid Democratic Push For Ethics Reforms

The U.S. Senate is set to resume consideration of the Digital Asset Clarity (CLARITY) Act this week as lawmakers return from an extended Memorial Day recess, with Democrats conditioning their support on stronger provisions addressing potential conflicts of interest among elected officials.

The Republican-led bill, which passed the House of Representatives in July 2025, aims to establish a comprehensive market structure for cryptocurrencies by granting greater authority to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over digital assets. It cleared two key Senate committees—the Agriculture Committee in January and the Banking Committee in May—before the break, but faces ongoing pushback from both the crypto industry and traditional banking sector over issues including stablecoins and tokenized equities, reported CoinTelegraph.

“This will actually be the biggest financial regulatory bill that Congress has done in quite some time, certainly since Dodd-Frank,” Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad told Fox Business on Monday.

Banking industry leaders have also voiced reservations. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon stated on Friday that the sector would not accept the bill as written, citing provisions that would allow crypto companies to pay interest on user deposits and stablecoin balances.

Bipartisan Hurdles and Ethics ConcernsLawmakers this week are expected to begin reconciling the differing versions of the legislation from the two committees, with some Senate insiders anticipating a floor vote as early as August. However, the path forward remains uncertain due to Democratic demands for ethics safeguards.

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