Flash News

TREE NEWS update: Greenfield Capital said it has asked the Swiss financial regulator to intervene in a governance dispute at the Safe Ecosystem Foundation, the body behind the Safe smart-account infrastructure. The investor said it had sought changes to the foundation’s board for months before turning to the watchdog. No response from the regulator or the foundation was given.

TREE NEWS update: Hester Peirce, known as “Crypto Mom,” left the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on October 2, departing about two months before her second term’s extension would have expired, to teach at Regent University School of Law. The SEC now has only two commissioners, Chairman Paul Atkins and Mark Uyeda, both Republicans, and the White House has not yet named a successor. Peirce had led the SEC’s crypto task force since January 21.

TREE NEWS update: Zcash has registered a new lobbying operation in Washington, listing the CLARITY Act and two digital asset tax proposals among the issues it plans to lobby on. The registration marks the privacy-focused cryptocurrency’s formal entry into US crypto policy advocacy.

TREE NEWS update: The US added just 29,000 nonfarm jobs in September, far below the 90,000 Wall Street expected, with unemployment edging up to 4.2%. The G7 decided to release 100 million barrels of emergency oil reserves immediately over four months, starting with a large-scale diesel投放. OPEC+ kept November output quotas unchanged, and Trump announced a “Superintelligence Task Force” naming DNI Jay Clayton as “AI czar”.

TREE NEWS update: Former SEC chairman Jay Clayton has been appointed as Trump’s new AI czar, drawing criticism from Roman Storm and the XRP community. Separately, veteran trader Peter Brandt flipped bullish and said Bitcoin could reach as high as $600,000 by 2029.

TREE NEWS update: SEC Chair Paul Atkins said the agency will advance more crypto and digital securities rules to keep digital asset markets in the United States. On October 2 he said the proposed crypto custody framework modernizes 1940 rules written only for traditional asset custody, following the Senate’s failure to pass the CLARITY Act last month. The push includes Regulation Crypto Assets and a five-year Innovation Exemption sandbox allowing US equities trading on decentralized exchanges and with liquidity providers. Former SEC official John Reed Stark called it beyond the SEC’s authority.

TREE NEWS reports: Turkish prosecutors have requested an investigation into Ibrahim Omer Gonul, former chairman of the Capital Markets Board (SPK), as part of a probe into investment funds, Istanbul’s chief prosecutor’s office said. Permission for the inquiry was sought from the Ministry of Treasury and Finance. Gonul is accused of failing to carry out his duties in supervising funds whose activities the justice minister described as “Ponzi-like.” Prosecutors questioned him over the fund investigation on Oct. 1.

TREE NEWS update: The SEC approved a Cboe BZX rule change allowing Volatility Shares LLC to list a 3x bitcoin futures ETF alongside five other leveraged commodity products, including a 3x ether ETF plus gold, silver, crude oil and natural gas funds. The bitcoin strategy targets three times the daily futures benchmark, before fees, using futures contracts rather than holding bitcoin directly. Trading can begin once the registration statements take effect, with each product issuing at least 100,000 shares at open and calculating NAV daily.

TREE NEWS update: The Independent Community Bankers of America sued the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday, challenging the OCC’s authority to grant national trust bank charters to crypto companies. ICBA seeks to vacate the March 2, 2026 final rule and Interpretive Letter 1176, and to revoke Protego Holdings’ conditional charter. The suit names charter applicants or recipients including Circle, Ripple, Paxos, Fidelity, BitGo, Kraken parent Payward, Block and World Liberty Financial.

TREE NEWS update: The Independent Community Bankers of America is suing to block the OCC’s national trust charters for crypto firms, arguing they create a “side door into the banking system” without the safeguards that bind traditional banks. The banking group contends the charters let crypto companies operate inside the banking system while sidestepping rules applied to conventional lenders.

TREE NEWS update: White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said the administration respects Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh’s decision to vote with other officials in favor of raising interest rates, though Hassett said he disagreed with the hike. Hassett added that Warsh acted “for the right reasons” and that Fed Chair Jerome Powell should leave.

TREE NEWS update: President Donald Trump said US intel chief Jay Clayton will lead the new Super Intelligence Force, reporting to the president and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Trump announced the appointment, placing the sitting intelligence chief at the head of the SIF. No further details on the body’s mandate or start date were given.

TREE NEWS update: Saudi Arabia’s Capital Market Authority is negotiating with other government bodies and sector regulators to revise foreign ownership limits on local stocks, CMA chairman Mazen Al-Sudair said in a television interview. “We have taken action and are pushing this work forward with full effort,” he said. Al-Sudair added that the authority does not want to float a specific percentage and then reverse it, and that talks aim to reach an agreed threshold.

TREE NEWS update: Japan has added Garantex, a crypto exchange linked to Russia, to its list of sanctions tied to the war in Ukraine. Garantex had previously been sanctioned by the US, the EU and other jurisdictions for helping Russian entities evade financial restrictions.

TREE NEWS reports: Strategy founder Michael Saylor said AI agents will become core participants in the digital economy and will favor native digital assets such as bitcoin for round-the-clock automated transactions, because the traditional financial system is frictional and unfriendly to AI. He urged US policymakers to shift from restricting to supporting digital assets through modernized regulation, including self-custody rights and allowing banks to custody bitcoin and extend credit against it.

TREE NEWS update: China Securities (International) Financial Holding has obtained a license from the Dubai International Financial Centre and authorization from the Dubai Financial Services Authority to open a representative office in the DIFC. Separately, Guotai Junan International, a unit of Guotai Haitong, signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Almaty city government in Kazakhstan to build a long-term partnership in cross-border financing and offshore renminbi funding channels.

TREE NEWS reports: Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, whose wealth Forbes estimates at over $100 billion, is living in Abu Dhabi after serving four months in a California prison for Bank Secrecy Act violations tied to Binance’s lack of KYC controls. Binance paid a $4.3 billion fine and CZ stepped down as CEO; he was pardoned by President Trump in October. MGX invested $2 billion in Binance at a $75 billion valuation, paid in World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin.

TREE NEWS update: The IMF completed its second and third reviews of El Salvador’s 40-month Extended Fund Facility and approved an immediate disbursement of about $138 million under the $1.4 billion program. Despite missed performance criteria, the Fund granted waivers based on corrective actions and renewed commitments. El Salvador will continue reducing state involvement in bitcoin-related activities, strengthen crypto regulation and transparency of public-sector crypto holdings, and not accumulate more bitcoin beyond recorded donations. Majority equity and operational control of the government’s Chivo bitcoin wallet have been transferred to a private operator.

TREE NEWS update: El Salvador has received $138 million from the International Monetary Fund after being granted waivers tied to Bitcoin, the IMF said. The fund said efforts will continue to reduce the state’s involvement in Bitcoin-related activities and to strengthen crypto-asset regulation and governance.