In February 2025 OKX admitted to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and paid $504M. On October 6, 2026, Circle, Ripple, QRT and Standard Chartered's SC Ventures invested at a $25B pre-money valuation, the same price ICE paid in March. The round size wasn't disclosed, and OKX is still paying for a DOJ-required compliance consultant until February 2027.
SEC Chair Paul Atkins confirmed Regulation Crypto drops this month — a sweeping safe harbor that shields DeFi, tokenized securities, and early-stage builders from SEC enforcement for the first time ever.
Theodore Gillibrand, 22, raised $30 million at a $300M valuation for APEC — a CFTC-licensed perps exchange — days after graduating Stanford. His mother is Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who co-wrote the Genius Act. The crypto industry is very online about it.
Morpho closes a $175M round at a $2B valuation backed by the three heaviest hitters in crypto VC — during one of the worst Bitcoin weeks of the year. Here's what they see that the market doesn't.
Circle raised $222M from BlackRock, a16z, and Apollo for Arc, a Layer 1 where USDC is the native gas token. $3B valuation, 100+ institution testnet, and a direct shot at Ethereum's institutional market.
SEC Chair Atkins confirms 'Reg Crypto' has cleared internal review and is at the White House — the first U.S. crypto-specific fundraising framework ever, with a $5M startup exemption and $75M/year cap.
You can't swap USDT for USDC at face value without slippage. A former a16z partner just raised $10M to build the clearinghouse that makes stablecoins actually fungible — and Stripe, MetaMask, and Phantom are already signed up.