The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has submitted a new regulatory action covering crypto asset transactions and markets for White House review, as the agency moves forward with its approach to overseeing the digital asset sector.

According to a filing with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the action, titled “Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets,” was received on Sept. 17 and is listed at the “prerule” stage. The designation indicates the action is at an early stage of the rulemaking process and has not yet been formally proposed.

The filing does not disclose details of the planned regulation, but comes days after the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act, legislation aimed at establishing a federal regulatory framework for crypto markets.

Source: Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

A day after the Sept. 15 vote, CFTC Chair Michael Selig posted on X that the agency was “locked in and ready to ship” rules for crypto markets using its existing statutory authority, while SEC Chair Paul Atkins similarly said the securities regulator would move ahead “with or without legislation.”

Both agencies took action the following day. The CFTC issued a no-action position for providers of passive software, while the SEC announced temporary exemptions for certain platforms facilitating onchain trading of tokenized securities.

Source: SEC

CFTC and SEC move ahead without new legislation

The CFTC had been exploring the possibility of advancing crypto rules without new legislation before the Senate vote this week. In remarks at the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee conference on Aug. 20, Selig said the agency was prepared to use its existing authority to establish a crypto asset market regime if the CLARITY Act stalled.

Selig added that he had directed CFTC staff to explore rules that could allow existing registrants and currently unregistered crypto exchanges to become a type of designated contract market called a “crypto asset market,” where leveraged or margined crypto trading could be offered under CFTC oversight.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong also said he expected regulators to move ahead after the vote. In a Sept. 15 post on X, he wrote that the SEC and CFTC had “the tools they need to create clear rules under existing authority” and that he expected them to begin working on the issue “in earnest.”

“So clarity is coming to crypto regardless,” Armstrong wrote.

Source: Brian Armstrong

Cointelegraph 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.

Crypto-focused venture capital firm Dragonfly’s managing partner, Haseeb Qureshi, proposed winding down the Zcash developer fund after it expires under current rules in 2028.

“I’m of the opinion that this should be the final Dev Fund,” wrote Qureshi in a Friday X post, arguing that the fund is large enough to fund remaining work on Zcash and that it risks being “politicized” as it approaches $100 million in value.

The Zcash development fund held 63,962 Zcash (ZEC) tokens at press time, worth about $95 million, according to ZecStats.

The remarks follow a broader industry debate that stemmed from the fund’s increasing value, following the ZEC token’s rally. Others argued that Zcash should maintain its development fund. Paradigm founder Matt Huang argued in a Wednesday X post that the fund is particularly important “in this age of AI cyber capabilities” and rapid quantum progress. 

Zcash pools, including the dev fund, also known as the lockbox. Source: ZecStats

The ZEC development fund is a protocol development fund that accrues 0.1875 ZEC tokens per block, representing 12% of the block subsidy under the NU6 upgrade. Its balance sits outside circulation until governance disbursement.

Related: Zcash holders back 25-second blocks, vote to keep ZEC halving schedule

Industry split over who should control the ZEC development fund?

Industry watchers are also debating who should control the development fund. Dragonfly’s Haseeb said that the fund’s control shouldn’t move toward “pure token holder voting,” but showed support for a partial model, under which token holders would elect temporary councils.

Huang agreed with this view, adding that pure token holder governance may introduce “unpredictability that could limit long-term trust as a monetary asset” and proposed a hybrid model combining additional forms of governance. 

Maxime Desalle, investment analyst at Winklevoss Capital, suggested that the Zcash community “completely get rid” of the development fund, which would solve all the governance disputes surrounding it, writing in a Thursday X post. 

In a previous post on Sept. 9, Desalle argued that the fund may hurt the security of Zcash while recreating the dependencies and bureaucracies that many welfare states suffer from.

In a Sept. 1 X post, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said that the Zcash Community Grants Committee was among the main reasons that Zcash “has survived and grown to where it is today.” On Sept. 14, Wilcox clarified that the committee only accounts for 40% of the development fund.

Magazine: The legal battle over who can claim DeFi’s stolen millions 

USDC issuer Circle has launched the mainnet of Arc, a layer-1 (L1) blockchain targeting stablecoin payments and financial markets, particularly agentic transactions.

Arc uses USDC as its native gas asset and offers Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility and deterministic sub-second settlement finality, according to an Arc blog post on Wednesday.

The network supports more than 20 fiat stablecoins, including USDC, EURC, JPYC, KRW1 and TRYB, while tokenized assets including BlackRock’s BUIDL and Circle’s USYC are available natively on Arc. Arc also offers interoperability with more than 20 blockchains through Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) and Gateway.

CEO Jeremy Allaire called Arc “the single most significant launch in Circle’s history since USDC itself.”  Separately, Circle said in a post on X that Arc was built for “programmable money, global markets, and agentic economic activity,” describing the network as stablecoin-native infrastructure for developers and institutions.

The launch follows Arc’s public testnet debut in October 2025, when Circle said more than 100 companies were participating, including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Mastercard and Visa.

Circle said in August that more than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders had participated in Arc’s private mainnet ahead of the public launch.

Arc said it ultimately plans to broaden participation in network operations and explore a transition from Proof of Authority to Proof of Stake in 2027. Circle also completed the genesis mint of 10 billion ARC tokens this week but said the mint does not represent a commitment to launch the token publicly.

Related: Crypto stocks slide after CLARITY Act fails to advance in Senate

Cointelegraph 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.

US authorities on Thursday announced sanctions against Iranian crypto exchange BitBank, accusing it of processing Bitcoin paid by ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said that as of June, the Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority used BitBank to transfer payments it received to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Treasury alleged it is part of the architecture used by Iranian financier Babak Zanjani to move hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin to the IRGC.

Treasury has previously alleged Hormuz Safe is part of an IRGC-backed scheme forcing vessels to buy maritime insurance for passage, including coverage against seizures by Iran itself.

“Today’s designations of Iranian digital asset infrastructure make perfectly clear that efforts to finance the Iranian regime using cryptocurrencies are not beyond OFAC’s reach,” said US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. 

The designation is the latest Treasury action aimed at isolating Iran from the international financial system, including through sanctions on digital asset exchanges. 

The OFAC designations include BitBank, its developer Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company and three associates of Zanjani, with the Treasury calling them “key components of the Iranian regime’s digital assets-based sanctions evasion infrastructure.”

Cointelegraph reached out to BitBank for comment. 

Iran’s BitBank is a separate entity from bitbank, inc, a fully licensed crypto exchange founded in 2014 in Japan, which was acquired by SBI Holdings in June. Treasury’s designation lists BitBank as having been established in 2024. 

Related: Bitcoin tops $79K, oil falls as Trump says Iran war could end 

In August, the US sanctioned two digital asset exchanges, Shelbit and Aban Tether, accusing them of assisting the Iranian regime in sanctions evasion. Treasury also sanctioned four crypto exchanges, including the country’s largest, Nobitex, in June. 

In July, the US government ordered the freezing of more than $130 million in USDt held in wallets linked to Iran. 

Iran has reportedly sought to mitigate the impact of tightening financial restrictions. Earlier this month, the Financial Times reported that Iran’s central bank eased foreign currency controls to encourage businesses to bring overseas earnings home, including through cryptocurrency, amid tightening US sanctions. 

Magazine: North Korea drives onchain malware surge, CoinEx shuts: Asia Express

UAE Upgrades National Document ID Vault To Avalanche

The UAE is trusting the document data of over 12.5 million citizens to a blockchain-based system.

The Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA) has chosen Avalanche, a smart contract-enabled layer 1 blockchain, to upgrade its UAEPASS digital vault, which controls the issuance, sharing, and verification of documents issued by both government and private institutions.

UAEPASS is the country’s national digital identity platform that centralizes and simplifies the management of ID and document data, allowing downstream services to simplify verification of already signed certifications.

John Nahas, Chief Business Officer at Ava Labs, stressed the relevance of UAEPASS digital vault migrating to Avalanche, highlighting that reliability was paramount in a digital identity-based system.

“The UAE is building digital services people use every day, and Avalanche is designed for exactly that kind of environment. This project shows what technology built for business looks like, with high-performance infrastructure operating behind the scenes to help deliver secure and seamless services,” he stated.

Avalanche explains that this move to an Avax-powered dedicated L1 blockchain lets the system manage only UAE-related traffic on its own network, allowing it to enjoy predictable performance rather than relying on blockspace lent by a public blockchain that can suffer due to external conditions.

Also, after this improvement, the TDRA oversees the UAEPASS Digital Vault ecosystem, setting the terms for the infrastructure and who accesses and manages it. “A government cannot outsource accountability for a system 12.5 million people depend on,” Avalanche assessed.

“Upgrading the Digital Vault ensures the platform is built on infrastructure that can carry that responsibility for years to come,” said Saeed Belhoul, Dgov Operations Director at the TDRA.

The move is similar to what the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has done before, digitizing 42 million car titles on Avalanche to speed up and facilitate title transfer operations. Avalanche has also been in the spotlight after facilitating tens of thousands of ticketing transactions during the FIFA World Cup 2026.

The chain’s one-month TVL growth stands at 71%, yet net outflows of $11.11 million over 24 hours show capital can still move quickly.

Four blue-chip layer-1 blockchains from the last market cycle have lost more than 99% of the value once locked on them, and a crypto researcher is asking if Robinhood Chain is next.

Stacy Muur pointed to steep TVL losses at Fantom, Aurora, Canto and Songbird, putting Robinhood Chain’s recent growth against a less forgiving history.

Four Blue-Chip L1s That Cratered

In a post on X, Muur called out the damage bluntly. “Blue-chip L1s from the last cycle got absolutely deleted,” she wrote before running through the numbers. Fantom peaked at $7.7 billion in locked value and now sits at $4.8 million, with daily decentralized exchange volume down to under $9,000 even though $318 million worth of stablecoins are still parked on the chain.

Aurora went from $2.6 billion to $3.1 million, and DefiLlama shows just 133 addresses touching the chain in the past day, despite the project having raised $102 million over its lifetime. Canto fell from $200 million to $3.6 million, with its token now trading at $0.0017 for a market cap of roughly $1 million.

On its part, Songbird dropped from $50 million to about $200,000, though it still pulled in over 2,500 daily active addresses even with chain fees sitting at just $77 for the day.

Current DefiLlama data shows Robinhood Chain itself holds about $928 million in DeFi TVL, several orders of magnitude above where any of the four chains Muur cited stand today, with a stablecoin market cap of $1.026 billion. Its 24-hour DEX volume was $1.552 billion, while perpetuals volume hit $577.58 million.

The chain recorded $524,989 in fees and $471,769 in revenue over the same period, although it also had net outflows of $11.11 million. Its DeFi TVL is up 3.35% over seven days and 71% across 30, and it ranks 10th among the biggest chains by that metric, behind more established networks like Ethereum, Solana, Base, BSC and Tron.

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Despite the impressive performance, Muur closed her post by asking, flatly, whether Robinhood Chain’s own TVL will still be around in 2030.

Activity High, but TVL Durability Remains Untested

Robinhood Chain’s DEX volume hit a daily high above $1.3 billion in early September, with Arkham data at the time showing the chain generating more in fees than Solana, Base, or Ethereum, one of the drivers being the direct trading of meme coins against tokenized stocks.

It has since beaten that mark repeatedly, going as far as $2.61 billion in DEX volume on September 11, with yesterday’s coming in at over $1.6 billion.

But Muur’s comparison raises a different question: whether the current usage can translate into TVL that persists through another market cycle, and the four older chains have shown how dramatically liquidity can disappear after an L1 falls out of favor.

A Democratic counterproposal landed ahead of the Senate vote as lawmakers remained divided over ethics language and other CLARITY Act provisions.

The latest stage of negotiations over the CLARITY Act has moved the bill toward a key vote while major disagreements remain. Senate Democrats sent Republicans their counterproposal late Monday after reviewing the newest Republican draft released a day earlier.

The timing came just before the legislation’s first scheduled Senate vote on Tuesday afternoon.

CLARITY Act Negotiations Heat Up

The counterproposal’s details were not disclosed. Much of the disagreement centers on its revised ethics language. Concerns were raised about a provision involving the Office of Government Ethics that could allow senior government officials to keep their existing crypto business connections.

Senator Cynthia Lummis, who is one of the Republicans leading the negotiations, said Monday that Democrats were continuing to seek additional concessions. She maintained that the legislation was still ready to move to a vote.

The White House has also defended the latest version. Patrick Witt, the White House’s top crypto advisor, spoke at a Solana Policy Institute summit in Washington and said the administration had worked to address the concerns that emerged during negotiations.

While expressing confidence about the Senate beginning its consideration of the highly anticipated cryptocurrency regulation, he said that the question of securing 60 votes would ultimately be political rather than a matter of policy since he viewed the bill as genuinely bipartisan and deserving of support.

His remarks come a day after a 635-page Republican draft that made changes to several provisions that had become contentious.

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Banking Groups and States Raise Alarms

The changes have drawn complaints from different groups. For instance, banking groups are mainly focused on the rules for stablecoin rewards. Eight trade associations sent their concerns to Senate leaders John Thune and Chuck Schumer on Monday. The groups also asked lawmakers to make several changes to the bill.

Separately, New York Attorney General Letitia James and 17 other attorneys general urged senators to reject the legislation. They warned that federal preemption could weaken state anti-fraud, investigative, and enforcement authority, including administrative, civil, and criminal powers that form the basis of state police powers. They also claimed that it could leave the SEC with “broad preemptive power” to decide where the rules apply.

Despite those reactions, Witt said that it was the “best and final offer.”

Crypto industry leaders are looking to US financial regulators to fill the regulatory gap after a major crypto bill establishing a regulatory framework for digital assets stalled in the Senate on Tuesday.

The Senate voted 49-50 on a motion to invoke cloture and advance the CLARITY Act, short of the 60 votes needed as Democrats raised concerns over US President Donald Trump’s crypto investments. Industry executives said the result was a disappointment, but pointed to potential rulemaking from the US Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission as the next best source of regulatory clarity. 

Speaking to Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction before Tuesday’s vote, Fireblocks US policy director Jessica Martinez said the company would continue engaging with regulators if the legislation failed.

“We’re going to continue working with the regulators, the SEC and the CFTC specifically,” Martinez said.

Meanwhile, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse on Tuesday, following the vote, said that US regulators will “continue to work hard to issue rules to fill the legislative gap,” as a reason to remain optimistic.

Their belief comes as SEC Chair Paul Atkins reiterated his commitment to deliver clearer crypto rules at the Solana Policy Institute Summit on Monday. However, there’s concern the solution won’t give long-term investors the same confidence that legislation would provide.

“Rejecting the bill leaves firms completely dependent on agency guidance and ongoing administrative discretion,” added NEAR chief legal officer Abhishek Vaidyanathan.

“Firms setting their 2027 budgets would face another prolonged delay, forcing them back into case-by-case judgments and repeated legal work while counterparties continue to price in regulatory uncertainty,” he added. 

Bitget Wallet chief operating officer Alvin Kan told Cointelegraph that failure to advance the bill on Tuesday brings “continued uncertainty over how securities, commodities and money-transmission rules apply across different products.”

Another attempt for CLARITY

The CLARITY Act could face another cloture vote after Senator Thom Tillis moved to reconsider Tuesday’s failed attempt. Industry executives remain divided over how long the latest setback will stall the bill’s progress.

“Today’s result is a delay, not a verdict. Legislation of this scale rarely moves in a straight line, and a cloture vote can be brought again,” 1inch chief legal officer Orest Gavryliak said in comments shared with Cointelegraph.

Related: Crypto stocks slide after CLARITY Act fails to advance in Senate

Vaidyanathan was less optimistic about any immediate prospects, saying the next Congress was the likely next opportunity to address crypto market structure.

“Now that cloture failed, the next Congress is the likely next opportunity to address crypto market structure. The House has already canceled its weeks of September 21 and 28, and the Senate’s state work period begins October 5 ahead of the November 3 election.”

Polymarket odds of the CLARITY Act being signed into law in 2026 fell to 5% on Tuesday, the lowest probability since the market was opened in January. 

Magazine: Crypto’s biggest week ever? Swarm fears prompt AI slowdown: Hodler’s Digest

Researchers at the Bank for International Settlements found that estimates of Bitcoin onchain transfer values can vary by as much as sixfold depending on how transactions are measured.

The finding concerns onchain Bitcoin transfer values, rather than trading volume on crypto exchanges. The sixfold gap reflects differences between measurement methods, including how change outputs and other transfers back to the sender are treated.

The discrepancy stems largely from Bitcoin’s transaction structure. When users spend Bitcoin, unspent funds are often returned to the sender as change, which can be counted as another output even though it does not represent funds being transferred to another party.

Breakdown of blockchain records analyzed in the BIS study. Source: BIS

“Metrics such as transaction volumes, market capitalisation and total value locked often suggest a degree of accuracy that is not supported by the nature of the underlying data,” the researchers wrote.

The measurement problem also extends to Bitcoin’s market capitalization. The researchers found that the conventional measure has at times been as much as four times higher than realized capitalization, which values each coin at the price when it last moved.

The study, based on 100 billion blockchain records across Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tron, found that similar measurement challenges extend across the broader crypto ecosystem.

Related: Stablecoins not credible for payments at scale, BIS chief says

Ethereum and stablecoins present additional challenges

Ethereum presented a separate measurement challenge because of the proliferation of smart contracts. Of roughly 67.5 million active contracts examined, about 54 million could not be categorized using the classifications in the study.

Interpreting stablecoin activity presents another challenge, as the same asset can serve different purposes across blockchains. USDT on Ethereum was more closely linked to DeFi activity, while USDT on Tron was associated more with payment-like and store-of-value purposes.

The differences were particularly stark in smart contract holdings. The share of USDT held by smart contracts on Ethereum exceeded 20% in 2022, compared with around 1% on Tron. Because of the different use cases, the researchers said aggregating USDT activity across blockchains can conflate different types of economic activity and obscure how stablecoins are actually being used.

The BIS researchers concluded that onchain indicators should be treated as “noisy approximations rather than direct measures of economic activity.”

Visa filters stablecoin data to reflect economic activity

Some analytics providers already distinguish between raw blockchain activity and adjusted measures intended to better represent economic activity.

Visa’s Onchain Analytics dashboard, powered by data from Allium Labs, displays both total and adjusted stablecoin transaction volumes. Visa says its adjusted methodology aims to remove potential distortions from activity including high-frequency trading, bots, bridge routing and internal exchange operations.

The dashboard currently shows $6.4 trillion in total stablecoin transaction volume across the networks it tracks over the past 30 days, compared with $313.1 billion in adjusted volume.

Stablecoin transaction volumes. Source: Visa Onchain Analytics