China’s tax and financial regulators are steering banks toward blockchain technology as a tool for sharing tax data and improving credit access, with small and medium-sized enterprises at the centre of the push, as per local media reports.

A joint policy notice from the State Administration of Taxation and the National Financial Regulatory Administration called on banks and taxpayers to standardize data sharing to reduce information asymmetry between tax authorities, banks and enterprises. The agencies also suggested improving credit models, enhancing approval efficiency, and increasing the supply of financing services to “honest, tax-paying enterprises.”

The initiative builds on a framework that has been in development for years. As early as 2019, China’s State Taxation Administration and banking regulators formalized a bank-tax interaction model designed to help private, small and micro-sized businesses convert their records as compliant taxpayers into access to bank financing.

The latest notice adds a technological dimension to that model, with blockchain expected to allow tax authorities and lenders to share records in a tamper-resistant environment, reducing dependence on traditional paperwork and making risk assessment and loan approvals faster.

China is currently aiming to build a unified national data market and develop the digital economy, with the basic framework scheduled to take shape by 2029. Shen Zhulin, deputy director of the National Data Administration, had said at a January press conference last year that China expects blockchain-based data infrastructure to attract Chinese Yuan 400 billion (USD 58 billion) in annual investment.

Meanwhile, authorities in the country have maintained the nationwide ban on crypto trading and mining introduced in 2021. They also expanded restrictions this year bringing into its regulatory ambit stablecoins and tokenized assets as well. The country’s embrace of blockchain as financial infrastructure therefore runs in a separate lane from digital assets entirely, with regulators drawing a firm line between the underlying technology and the crypto markets built on top of it.

Key Takeaways

• We will be in a position, I hope, to bring all of this together very soon,” Bill Hagerty said.
• “My expectation is that we get it into committee in this next work period that starts on Monday of next week, so that over the next several weeks we should have this into the banking committee,” he added.

Amid widespread criticism, US Senate Banking Committee member Bill Hagerty said on Monday he expects a potential path for a digital asset market structure bill in the coming weeks after months of delays in Congress.

He made the comment while speaking at the Digital Assets and Emerging Tech Policy Summit at Vanderbilt University. Hagerty reportedly stated fellow Republican lawmakers planned to move the bill through the banking panel starting next week.

“We will be in a position, I hope, to bring all of this together very soon,” he said, “On the banking committee side, I think we’re very close, and my expectation is that we get it into committee in this next work period that starts on Monday of next week, so that over the next several weeks we should have this into the banking committee.”

He added: “There’re several issues still outstanding, I think none of them are insurmountable and we will get to a point I believe in April that we’ll have it out of the banking committee. There’s still a lot more work to do.”

“We’re going into the midterms(elections). I think if we get this done in April, we can clearly get this taken care of before the midterms,” he added

The act passed the House of Representatives in July. The Agriculture Committee, which oversees commodities, advanced its version of the bill in a January markup, but concerns over tokenized equities, ethics and stablecoin yield have delayed consideration in the Banking Committee, which must hold a markup before a potential floor vote in the Senate.

Banking industry officials have long raised concerns over stablecoin yield programs competing with bank deposits, arguing that it would threaten financial stability.

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump had hit out at banks accussing them of undermining efforts to pass crypto market structure legislation. He had alleged that the banks were blocking progress over disagreements on stablecoin yield payments. “The Banks should not be trying to undercut The Genius Act, or hold The Clarity Act hostage,” he had stated.

Interestingly, the latest development comes days after Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal said the US Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is “moving toward” a markup hearing in the US Senate Banking Committee and hinted that it could eventually move to a floor vote if senators resolve the stablecoin yield dispute and schedule a markup.

Key Takeaways

• In a Friday announcement, Patrick’s office issued 2026 interim charges to Senate committees, directing them to study key policy areas before lawmakers reconvene.
• The LG asked lawmakers to stud “the sudden inundation of prediction market gambling and the exploitation of federal law to circumvent Texas gambling prohibitions,

In a major development, Texas Lieutenant Governor (LG) Dan Patrick has directed state Senate committees to examine prediction markets, cryptocurrency and blockchain technology as part of legislative priorities ahead of the state’s next session in January 2027.

In a Friday announcement, Patrick’s office issued 2026 interim charges to Senate committees, directing them to study key policy areas before lawmakers reconvene. Patrick said the charges were intended to “advance the priorities of Texas’ conservative majority.”

On prediction markets, Patrick asked lawmakers to focus on closing gambling loopholes by studying “the sudden inundation of prediction market gambling and the exploitation of federal law to circumvent Texas gambling prohibitions,” including those related to election wagering.

Texas has some of the strictest gambling laws in the country, with betting largely restricted to casinos on Native American reservations and the state lottery system. While gaming authorities in other US states have filed lawsuits against prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket over sports and election wagers, Texas was not among them as of Tuesday.

Commenting on digital assets, Patrick called for stronger coordination with federal cryptocurrency regulations and an evaluation of crypto kiosks operating in the state. The charges come as Texas continues to build out its position on digital assets. In its 2025 legislative session, lawmakers passed a Bitcoin reserve bill that was signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott in June, making Texas the first US state to establish such a reserve. The state made its first $5 million Bitcoin purchase in November 2025.

Patrick’s charges also included a directive to study the “impact of AI on the Texas workforce and its implications for economic competitiveness,” a priority that arrives alongside reports that Google plans to support a multibillion-dollar data center in Texas leased to Anthropic.

The project is expected to exceed $5 billion initially, part of a broader shift among mining companies pivoting toward AI and high-performance computing amid rising mining difficulty and falling crypto prices.

Recently, several states in the US have spotlighted risks faced by prediction markets and engaged in coordinated regulatory crackdown on them.Earlier this week, a Nevada state court judge has issued a preliminary injunction against crypto exchange Coinbase, preventing it from offering event-based prediction contracts within the state.

Key Takeaways

• The order also imposes a $500,000 civil monetary penalty against Peken Global
• CFTC had alleged that Peken operated an unregistered offshore commodities exchange.

A federal court has entered a consent order permanently barring Peken Global Limited, the operator of crypto exchange KuCoin, from allowing US participants to access the exchange unless it registers as a foreign board of trade, bringing a close to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) enforcement action against the platform. CFTC had alleged that Peken operated an unregistered offshore commodities exchange.

The order, issued Monday by the District Court for the Southern District of New York, also imposes a $500,000 civil monetary penalty against Peken Global. It converts what had previously been a minimum two-year US market exit, agreed as part of a separate criminal resolution, into an indefinite ban.

The CFTC first sued Peken Global and three other entities involved in KuCoin’s operation in March 2024. The agency charged Peken Global alongside Mek Global Ltd, PhoenixFin PTE Ltd and Flashdot Ltd with operating an unlicensed digital asset derivatives exchange, failing to register as a futures commission merchant, and running what it described as “sham” know-your-customer (KYC) procedures that did not do enough to keep U.S. customers off the platform. The agency had originally sought disgorgement, civil monetary penalties, permanent trading bans and a permanent injunction.

The final consent order permanently enjoins Peken Global from future violations as charged but does not require disgorgement of profits earned during the period covered by the complaint, which ran from July 2019 to around June 2023.

The CFTC cited Peken Global’s cooperation with its investigation and related proceedings, including the parallel criminal action in US v. Flashdot Limited, as the basis for that decision. Separately, the court entered an order of voluntary dismissal with prejudice dropping all CFTC claims against Mek Global, PhoenixFin and Flashdot, while also dismissing counts two through five of the original complaint against Peken Global.

Peken Global agreed to the settlement without admitting or denying the CFTC’s findings.

Monday’s order is the latest in a series of significant U.S. regulatory outcomes for KuCoin over the past 14 months. In January 2025, Peken Global pleaded guilty to one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, resulting in a $112.9 million criminal fine and $184.5 million in forfeiture under a Department of Justice agreement that also required the exchange to exit the U.S. market for at least two years. The CFTC consent order now removes that time limit entirely.

I keep seeing the same headline everywhere today. Bitcoin is down. Fear is at 9. The market is over. And yeah, all of that is technically true. BTC closed the week at $66,457. The fear and greed index printed single digits for the first time since the FTX collapse.

March was the ugliest month for crypto since June 2022. But here’s the number that nobody is putting in their headline, and it’s the only one that actually matters for what comes next: stablecoin supply just hit an all-time record of $316 billion.

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Why Does Record Stablecoin Supply Matter for Bitcoin’s Price?

Think about what a stablecoin actually represents. It’s money that someone already moved from their bank account into the crypto ecosystem. They converted their dollars, euros, or rupees into USDT or USDC.

They went through the KYC. They paid the on-ramp fees. They’re sitting inside crypto’s front door. They just haven’t walked into the living room yet.

When $316 billion in capital is parked one click away from buying Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Solana, and BTC is sitting at its cheapest price since early March with exchange supply at a six-year low of 2.21 million coins — that’s a coiled spring. Not a dead market. Whether you’re watching this from a trading desk in Mumbai, a bedroom in Manila, a Starbucks in San Francisco, or a co-working space in Dubai, that stablecoin wall is visible from every timezone.

What Is the Crypto Fear and Greed Index Telling Us at 9?

Nine is panic. Nine is people selling because they can’t handle looking at their portfolio anymore, not because the fundamentals changed. And I get it — this month was rough. The FOMC turned hawkish. Iran escalated. Oil blew past $100.

The $14 billion options expiry last Thursday gutted leveraged longs. But here’s what happened the last two times the fear index hit single digits. After the Luna crash in May 2022, Bitcoin rallied 28% within 45 days. After the FTX collapse in November 2022, BTC gained 40% over the following two months. Single-digit fear doesn’t guarantee a bottom.

But it does guarantee that most of the selling is done. The people who were going to panic already panicked. What’s left is the $316 billion sitting in stablecoins, the ETF inflows that totaled $18.7 billion in Q1 despite everything, and Morgan Stanley filing a spot BTC ETF this week on the NYSE. That’s not a market preparing to die. That’s a market loading a slingshot.

Will Crypto Recover From Here or Keep Falling?

The honest answer is that it depends on two things: oil prices and stablecoin deployment timing. If Iran talks resume and oil drops below $95, risk assets catch a bid instantly and crypto benefits first because it trades 24/7 while equity markets wait for Monday.

Historically, extreme fear readings on Fridays have led to Monday short squeezes 58% of the time since 2024 according to Blockchain Magazine’s data. On the other hand, if the Iran situation worsens over the weekend and oil gaps above $110 again, $66K support breaks and we’re looking at $61K or lower before any meaningful bid shows up.

That’s the binary nature of trading crypto during a geopolitical crisis. But even in the bearish scenario, that stablecoin wall doesn’t evaporate. It just waits longer. And when it deploys into a market with historically low exchange supply, the move will be violent in the other direction.

What I’m Doing This Weekend

Nothing aggressive. I’ve got limit bids sitting at $64,500 for BTC and $1,850 for ETH. Those are my capitulation wick levels — the prices I’d be happy to own at even if the chart gets uglier before it gets better. Stop losses below $62K and $1,750 respectively.

If those bids don’t fill, I’m fine. I’d rather miss the absolute bottom than catch a falling knife on a weekend with Iran headlines and thin liquidity. The one thing I refuse to do is sell into a fear index of 9 while $316 billion waits on the sideline. Every major bottom in crypto’s history looked exactly like this. Terrible sentiment, terrible headlines, and a wall of money ready to move the second the narrative shifts. My job isn’t to predict when the narrative shifts. My job is to be positioned when it does.

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