The Federal Reserve released formal guidelines this afternoon to oversee the process by which “institutions offering new types of financial products or with novel charters” could be granted so-called “master accounts,” a key financial status that allows for direct payments with and access to, the Fed. All federally-chartered banks possess a master account.

The Fed’s 49-page ‘Final Guidance’ mentions the word "cryptocurrency" only once when discussing the sort of novel institutions that may seek master accounts under these guidelines. But the subtext of today’s announcement is inextricably linked to the crypto industry.

“The new guidelines provide a consistent and transparent process to evaluate requests for Federal Reserve accounts and access to payment services in order to support a safe, inclusive, and innovative payment system," Fed vice chair Lael Brainard said in a statement.

In other news,

• Dragonfly Acquires Ethereum-Backer Metastable Capital. Read More
• Iran using digital currencies to pay for imports, with first order at $10M. Read More
• Galaxy Digital Terminates $1.2 Billion Bitgo Acquisition Deal. Read More

• Bitcoin Miner Bitfarms Posts $142M Loss in Q2. Read More

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At the time of writing, the global crypto market cap stands at $1.15 trillion with a cryptocurrency volume of US$75.92 billion. This represents an 11.28% increase within 24 hours!

After spiking above $25,000 to a new two-month high, bitcoin was violently rejected at that point and dumped by more than $1,000 in hours. Ethereum painted a multi-month high of its own above $2,050 during the weekend - a figure which has since plunged by 4.5% to around $1,900.

BNB, ADA, and XRP have all dropped by similar percentages to ETH. More daily losses are evident from Solana, Polkadot, Avalanche, and Polygon.

Interestingly, the two-largest meme coins – Dogecoin and Shiba Inu – are taking this current correction rather well. DOGE is relatively stable, while SHIB is actually in the green with a 7% daily increase.

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Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao "CZ" said on Friday that the crypto exchange has frozen or recovered $450,000, which was stolen from DeFi protocol Curve.Finance earlier this week.

On Tuesday, hackers stole nearly $570,000 from Curve.Finance. Afterward, the platform's developers said they had identified and fixed the source of the issue.

Curve.Finance is a major player in the world of DeFi because of its CRV token rewards emissions, which serve as a source of income for several other protocols.

Binance is working with law enforcement to return the funds to affected users, according to a tweet from Zhao.

In other news,

• DeFi Exchange dYdX Blocking Addresses Associated With Tornado Cash. Read More
• DeFi Platform Acala’s Stablecoin Falls 99% After Hackers Issue 1.3B Tokens. Read More
• "DeFi Hub of Polkadot” Suffers Major Hack. Read More

• DeFi platform Oasis to block wallet addresses deemed at-risk. Read More

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The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), the council of provincial and territorial securities regulators, announced Monday that crypto trading platforms would be expected to provide a pre-registration undertaking to their principal regulators as they take steps to comply fully with securities regulations. Two platforms, Crypto.com and the Canadian platform Coinsquare Capital Markets have already filed those undertakings.

Trading platforms will be expected to agree in the undertaking to comply with terms and conditions relating to investor protection. Filing the undertaking will allow crypto trading platforms to continue operating during the review of their applications for registration with the CSA. The new undertaking is part of the “interim approach” introduced in the guidance on securities law requirements for crypto asset trading platforms released in March 2021 by the CSA and Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC).

In other news,

• UN calls for comprehensive crypto regulation in developing countries. Read More
• President of Central Bank of Brazil Disagrees With 'Heavy Hand' Regulations for Cryptocurrencies. Read More
• EU to Create New Crypto Regulator. Read More
• Coin Center may challenge US Treasury’s sanctions on Tornado Cash in court. Read More
• Binance Snaps Up the In-principle Approval to Trade in Kazakhstan. Read More

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suffered a major setback as Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn granted Ripple’s appeal to serve subpoenas and authenticate videos of public remarks made by the regulatory agency’s officials.

Ripple is set to serve two subpoenas to at least seven SEC officials. The Judge presiding over the high-profile case Netburn snubbed the SEC’s claim that the defendants were trying to reopen fact discovery.

The goal behind SEC’s move was to serve several subpoenas so that it could obtain video material that would bolster its own claims. SEC responded with a one-liner that said,

“Plaintiff respectfully takes no position on Defendants’ motion to reopen fact discovery to serve non-party subpoenas for the purpose of obtaining video recordings for authentication.”

In other news,

• Korean regulators investigate banks over $6.5B tied to Kimchi premium. Read More
• Zipmex Granted Three Month Creditor Protection From Singapore Court. Read More
• Hotbit Suspends Service After Law Enforcement Freezes Its Funds, Subpoenas Senior Managers. Read More
• Lawsuit Accuses Mark Cuban, Voyager Digital Of Defrauding Cryptocurrency Investors. Read More
• CFTC sues Ohio man over crypto Ponzi scheme. Read More

• Crypto Hedge Fund Sues In Del. For Return Of Digital Assets. Read More

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