Morning Edition · Friday, September 18, 2026
Crypto
SEC Grants Five-Year Exemption for Trading Tokenized US Stocks On-Chain
The order requires each token to carry the dividends and voting rights of the real share, caps listings and volume, and excludes the synthetic stock tokens sold offshore.
Crypto
Aztec Discloses Soundness Flaw That Could Let a Forged Proof Pass Verification
The privacy network says a crafted proof could validate a transaction the chain should reject, putting funds, applications and contract state on its Alpha V5 network at risk.
Crypto
A $7.8 Million Restaking Theft Was Front-Run by a Bot, and Three Chains Show Three Ways to Handle Losses
The rsETH attacker exploited code that was working as written, then lost the proceeds to a maximal extractable value bot, while Cronos reversed 10,961 blocks and a $143,000 lending bug on Citrea went unrecovered.
Crypto
Ethereum Sets October 6 for Glamsterdam on Sepolia as Developers Warn About Fake Block Builders
Free testnet ether lets a builder outbid real competitors and then withhold the block contents, a griefing path that arrives with the upgrade that moves block building into the protocol.
Crypto
Zcash Targets November 5 for NU7, Cutting Block Times to 25 Seconds While Keeping the Halving Schedule
Faster blocks with an unchanged emission curve mean the per-block reward falls, and holders voted 99.9% in favor of the change with a final decision due October 20.
Crypto
With CLARITY Stalled, the CFTC Exempts Passive Software Builders From Broker Registration
Ten conditions define the relief, including no order routing discretion, no buy or sell signals and no custody of user assets, extending a carve-out previously granted to a single firm.
Macro
Bank of Japan Lifts Its Policy Rate to 1.25% as Bitcoin Trades Above $77,000
The 7-2 decision came two days after the Federal Reserve raised rates, and ether and XRP exchange-traded funds posted outflows even as major tokens gained.
Crypto
Lagarde Personally Urged Greece to Reject Binance's EU License, the Wall Street Journal Reports
The European Central Bank has no formal authority over crypto licensing, and Binance withdrew its Greek application in June before regulators ruled.
Geopolitics
US Treasury Sanctions Iranian Exchange BitBank Over Bitcoin Transfers to the Revolutionary Guard
The designation names the exchange's developer and three associates of financier Babak Zanjani, and alleges hundreds of millions of dollars in bitcoin moved to the Guard between June and July.
Crypto
S&P Global Buys OpenZeppelin, Putting a Ratings Firm Inside Smart-Contract Security
The acquired company's open-source contract libraries underpin more than $37 trillion in transferred value, including most large stablecoins and tokenized funds.
Crypto
XRP Ledger Adds Lending and Long-Term Locked Vaults While Aave's New Institutional Market Sits Unborrowed
Version 3.4.0 introduces closed-ended vaults that can bar withdrawals for years, at a moment when $76 million of supplied dollars on Aave's Arc market has attracted less than $100,000 of borrowing.
Crypto
Malware Posing as an AI Trading Agent Replaces Browser Wallets With Password-Stealing Copies
HP researchers found a Microsoft-signed installer side-loading Needle Stealer against seven wallet extensions, while Cardano's developer warned that its own YouTube channel was hijacked for a fake giveaway.