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Organisations around Cardano, Avalanche, Sui and IOTA have filed a joint response to the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s CP25/40 consultation, arguing that the rulebook should draw hard lines around “custody and control” and avoid sweeping non-custodial crypto activity into regimes designed for intermediaries.

The submission, led by the IOTA Foundation alongside the Sui Foundation, Cardano Foundation and the Avalanche Policy Coalition, is a targeted push on two areas the group says are most exposed to “scope, proportionality and technical interpretation” problems: staking and decentralized finance.

In a post on X, IOTA framed the core message as a scoping exercise as much as a policy one: “focus on custody & control, keep it proportionate, and support non-custodial, decentralized innovation for UK.”

Cardano, Avalanche, Sui And IOTA Warn Against Overregulation

The open letter expands that into a broader architecture: “A consistent theme across our feedback on both staking and decentralized finance is the importance of clearly distinguishing between infrastructure functions and intermediary functions. We recommend that regulatory obligations remain focused on entities that exercise custody, discretion, or commercial intermediation, while preserving the neutrality of public blockchain infrastructure.”

The letter adds that developers and infrastructure providers should be exempted: “[They] deliver software development, validation, communications, or other protocol-level services without controlling client assets or exercising unilateral decision-making are performing infrastructure roles rather than financial intermediation, and warrant a proportionate and differentiated regulatory treatment.”

That distinction matters, the group argues, because staking and DeFi aren’t single business models. They sit on a spectrum from fully custodial services where a firm safeguards assets and intermediates execution to protocol-native activity where users retain control of keys and assets.

On staking, IOTA’s X thread distilled the policy ask into a binary: “regulation must clearly distinguish custodial vs non-custodial/models.” It adds that custodial staking “where firms safeguard assets” warrants “appropriate retail disclosures, consent + record-keeping,” while “non-custodial/protocol-level staking (no control of user assets/keys) should not be swept into the same regime.”

The letter mirrors that framing and narrows it to where the risk sits: “Where staking is provided through a custodial arrangement, and the firm safeguards client assets and intermediates the staking process, we recommend applying the proposed requirements on information provision, key contractual terms, express prior consent for retail clients, and record-keeping.”

It then draws the line the signatories want the FCA to adopt: “For non-custodial and delegated staking arrangements, where firms do not control client assets or private keys, we recommend that such activities remain outside the scope of regulated staking activity, as this maintains proportionality and aligns regulatory obligations with the actual sources of risk.”

The second pressure point is the FCA’s concept of a “clear controlling person” in DeFi. IOTA’s post argues the term needs a “technical, objective definition,” warning that obligations should scale with “custody, discretion, and unilateral control; not with writing code, participating in governance, or providing neutral infrastructure.”

The open letter keeps the same structure: it accepts the FCA’s intent to capture cases where an identifiable party is “effectively carrying on regulated cryptoasset activities,” but pushes back on triggering regulatory status based on development and infrastructure. Instead, it urges the FCA to anchor expectations to “demonstrable, unilateral control over protocol operation, governance or economic outcomes,” particularly because DeFi “rel[ies] on self-custody, automated execution and open participation.”

IOTA positioned the argument as pro-scope, not anti-rules: “smarter scoping = better consumer protection where risk is real, plus legal certainty that keeps non-custodial innovation from being regulated out of existence.” The letter closes on the same trade-off: obligations tied to “custody, discretion and unilateral control” would, the group says, “strengthen legal certainty, enhance consumer protection where it is most needed, and reinforce the UK’s position as a jurisdiction that understands the architectural realities of decentralized technologies.”

At press time, Cardano traded at $0.264.

Страх криптоинвесторов остается высоким. Распродажи крупнейших цифровых активов продолжаются вот уже четвертую неделю к ряду — несмотря на положительную статистику по рынку труда и инфляции в США.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) moved this week to build a new bridge with the crypto industry, naming a 35-member Innovation Advisory Committee that includes top exchange and blockchain leaders.

Reports say the roster gives industry executives a formal line into policy talks, and it lists a mix of crypto founders, exchange bosses and traditional market players.

CFTC Execs Granted A Seat At The Table

Among those tapped are Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong and Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse, whose firms have been central to recent debates over how digital assets should be regulated in the US.

.@CFTC Announces Innovation Advisory Committee Members: https://t.co/Inpqzo0ujd

— CFTC (@CFTC) February 12, 2026

The committee’s purpose is to give the regulator up-to-date industry perspective as it considers rules for derivatives, market structure, token classification and other technical issues.

CFTC Chair Mike Selig said Thursday that the committee’s 35 members will help “align the CFTC’s decisions with real market conditions” and allow the commission to “establish clear guidelines for what he called the Golden Age of American Financial Markets.”

Honored to be named to the @CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee. Thank you @ChairmanSelig and look forward to working alongside @passalacqua_mj and this impressive group to help the CFTC develop clear rules of the road for crypto founders. https://t.co/ZO9mcyORZN

— Chris Dixon (@cdixon) February 12, 2026

What The Roster Looks Like

The membership list reads like a cross-section of the market: centralized exchanges, DeFi founders, trading-venue operators and a handful of established financial firms.

Some reporting highlights that around 20 members have direct ties to crypto firms, while others represent legacy market infrastructure, which creates a mix of viewpoints the commission can tap when drafting guidance or vetting ideas.

Why Industry Leaders Joined

Reports note executives accepted the roles for different reasons. For some, it is an opportunity to press for clearer rules. For others, it may be a way to protect business models as regulators decide which activities fall under commodity rules and which fall under securities laws.

The move follows a period of public lobbying and high-profile disputes over jurisdiction that have left firms searching for predictability.

Voices And Risks

Giving industry a formal advisory channel can shorten feedback loops. But it also raises questions about how the regulator will manage conflicts and preserve impartiality.

Some observers say close engagement may help craft workable policy that recognizes market realities.

Others warn that heavy industry presence could shape rules in ways that favor incumbents over smaller innovators or the public interest.

Reports say the commission will have to balance open input with careful governance.

What Comes Next

The committee will begin meeting in the coming weeks, and the public will be watching for the topics it raises and the recommendations it produces.

Meetings are likely to focus on custody rules, how tokenized assets are classified, oversight of derivatives, and the handling of market data.

Whether those talks lead to concrete rule proposals will show if this new advisory setup truly shifts how digital asset policy is shaped in the US.

Featured image from V-graphix | Istock | Getty Images, chart from TradingView

Даркнет-платформы в массовом порядке переходят на использование анонимной криптовалюты Monero, сообщили аналитики работающий в области блокчейн-безопасности компании TRM Labs.

В пригороде Парижа, департаменте Валь-де-Марн, вооруженные грабители ворвались в квартиру главы французского подразделения криптобиржи Binance. В нападении участвовали трое мужчин в масках, самого гендиректора дома не оказалось, сообщила полиция.

Инвестиционный директор управляющей криптоактивами американской компании Bitwise Мэтт Хоуган (Matt Hougan) заявил, что крипторынок постепенно создает фундамент для выхода из медвежьего тренда.

Bitcoin’s quantum-security discussion just gained a concrete new artifact in the code-and-spec pipeline: an updated draft of BIP-360 has been merged into the official Bitcoin Improvement Proposals repository, proposing a Taproot-adjacent output type designed to limit exposure to future quantum key-recovery attacks.

The change matters less because it “solves” quantum risk today, and more because it formalizes a specific, opt-in path that preserves Taproot’s script-tree functionality while removing the spending route considered most problematic under a quantum-threat model.

Bitcoin Devs Make First Formal Quantum-Resistance Move

Anduro, a research-focused platform incubated by Marathon Digital (MARA), said on X that the merged update “introduces Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR), a proposed new output type that omits Taproot’s quantum-vulnerable key-path spend while preserving compatibility with Tapscript and script trees.”

In BIP terms, the proposal is scoped as “Consensus (soft fork)” and defines P2MR as a new SegWit v2 output that commits directly to the Merkle root of a script tree, rather than to a tweaked public key as in Pay-to-Taproot (P2TR). The practical implication is straightforward: P2MR outputs can only be spent via script-path logic; the key-path spend is removed entirely.

The BIP’s abstract frames the goal in terms of minimizing changes while providing an option set for users who want additional protection:

“This document proposes a new output type: Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR), via a soft fork. P2MR outputs operate with nearly the same functionality as P2TR (Pay-to-Taproot) outputs, but with the key path spend removed.” It adds that the intended protection is against “long exposure attacks by Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computers (CRQCs),” as well as “future cryptanalytic approaches that may compromise the elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) used by Bitcoin.”

A key element of the BIP is definitional discipline: it distinguishes “long exposure” attacks (where public keys are available on-chain for extended periods) from “short exposure” attacks, which would target public keys revealed briefly in the mempool during an unconfirmed spend.

The document is explicit that P2MR is not a complete quantum shield. “It is worth noting that proposed P2MR outputs are only resistant to ‘long exposure attacks’ on elliptic curve cryptography; that is, attacks on keys exposed for time periods longer than needed to confirm a spending transaction,” the BIP states.

“Protection against more sophisticated quantum attacks, including protection against private key recovery from public keys exposed in the mempool while a transaction is waiting to be confirmed (a.k.a. ‘short exposure attacks’), may require the introduction of post-quantum signatures in Bitcoin.” The authors add they “intend to offer a separate proposal for this purpose upon further research.”

That split is also why the proposal emphasizes tapscript compatibility. It positions P2MR as a script-tree output type that could, if Bitcoin ever adopts post-quantum signature opcodes, provide a cleaner upgrade runway than older script mechanisms that don’t support tapscript’s evolution path.

Anduro highlighted that the change is designed as a soft fork and “does not affect existing Taproot outputs.” P2MR would be a new output type (with bech32m addresses starting with bc1z) rather than a retrofit of existing bc1p Taproot UTXOs.

The proposal also doesn’t pretend the swap is free. By removing key-path spends, P2MR gives up Taproot’s most compact witness path (a single Schnorr signature). The BIP estimates that a minimal P2MR spend witness is 37 bytes larger than a Taproot key-path spend, though it can be smaller than an equivalent Taproot script-path spend because P2MR’s control block omits an internal public key.

Privacy shifts too. Because every spend is script-path, P2MR users necessarily reveal they are spending from a script tree—something Taproot key-path spends can avoid signaling.

Anduro said the update also “addresses criticism about Bitcoin devs not taking the quantum threat seriously,” and noted the addition of Isabel Foxen Duke as co-author to make the BIP clearer “to the general public, not just the Bitcoin developer community.”

BIP-360 remains in “Draft” status. But its merge into the canonical repository is still a meaningful process marker: it moves the quantum-safety conversation from abstract worry and mailing-list hypotheticals toward a specific consensus change proposal that wallets, libraries, and reviewers can now analyze line-by-line.

If the debate has a next phase, it’s likely to center on whether “prepared not scared” opt-ins like P2MR are sufficient groundwork or whether Bitcoin will eventually need to grapple directly with post-quantum signatures and the operational realities of migrating value at scale.

At press time, BTC traded at $66,558.

Комиссия по коммунальным услугам Техаса (PUC) собирается весной потребовать от майнинговых компаний и центров обработки данных отчетность о потребляемой воде.

Крупнейшая американская криптовалютная биржа Coinbase сообщила о чистом убытке $667 млн за последний квартал прошлого года. Убытки прервали восьмиквартальную череду прибыльных отчетных периодов: последний раз компания фиксировала потери в третьем квартале 2023 года.

Создателя нейросети для контента на децентрализованных платформах Zerebro Джеффи Ю (Jeffy Yu), обвиняемого в схеме «пампа и дампа» со своими токенами, заподозрили в повторной попытке самоубийства.

Генеральный директор компании Praetorian Group International (PGI) Рамиль Вентура Палафокс (Ramil Ventura Palafox) получил 20 лет тюрьмы за организацию финансовой пирамиды, от которой пострадали более 90 000 инвесторов по всему миру. Общий ущерб от действий мошенника оценивается в $62,7 млн.

Коэффициент MVRV биткоина  — отношение рыночной стоимости к реализованной — упал до 1,1, то есть первая криптовалюта сейчас приближается к так называемой зоне недооцененности, заявили аналитики компании CryptoQuant.

Председатель Комиссии по ценным бумагам и биржам США (SEC) Пол Аткинс (Paul Atkins) не смог дать законодателям четких комментариев о причине приостановки дела против основателя криптопроекта Tron Джастина Сана (Justin Sun). Приостановка длится уже 11 месяцев.

Палата представителей Нидерландов одобрила законопроект, который устанавливает налог на прирост капитала для криптовалют и любых других активов типа паев, облигаций и акций, — даже если они остаются без движения в портфелях инвесторов и просто дорожают со временем.

Из полицейского участка района Каннам в Сеуле, столице Южной Кореи, пропали 22 биткоина на сумму 2,14 млрд вон ($1,5 млн), изъятые в рамках уголовного дела 2021 года.

The XRP Ledger has activated Token Escrow (XLS-85) on mainnet on Feb.12, extending the network’s native escrow mechanics beyond XRP to Trustline-based tokens (IOUs) and Multi-Purpose Tokens (MPTs). The amendment was enabled today with 88% consensus (30/34 validators) and was introduced in rippled v2.5.0 under the XLS-85 specification.

Escrow, But For Every Asset On XRP Ledger

RippleX framed the change as a broadening of XRPL’s settlement primitives from one native asset to the wider token stack via X:

“Token Escrow (XLS-85) is now live on XRPL Mainnet! This feature extends native escrow functionality beyond XRP to all Trustline-based tokens (IOUs) and Multi-Purpose Tokens (MPTs). From stablecoins like RLUSD to Real World Assets, the XRPL now supports secure, conditional, onchain settlement for all assets.” It added: “The toolbox for Institutional DeFi just got bigger.”

Token Escrow (XLS-85) is now live on XRPL Mainnet!

This feature extends native escrow functionality beyond XRP to all Trustline-based tokens (IOUs) and Multi-Purpose Tokens (MPTs).

From stablecoins like RLUSD to Real World Assets, the XRPL now supports secure, conditional,… pic.twitter.com/DNCJxZsoK2

— RippleX (@RippleXDev) February 12, 2026

XRPL.org describes escrow in familiar terms, then emphasizes what the ledger automates: “Traditionally, an escrow is a contract between two parties to facilitate financial transactions… The XRP Ledger takes escrow a step further, replacing the third party with an automated system built into the ledger.” With the TokenEscrow amendment, that same approach now applies to fungible tokens, not just XRP.

For Trust Line Tokens, the issuing account must enable the Allow Trust Line Locking flag so the issued token can be escrowed. For MPTs, the issuer must set Can Escrow and Can Transfer flags at issuance so those tokens can both be held in escrow and transferred when released. One notable constraint: issuers cannot create escrows using their own issued tokens, though they can receive escrowed tokens as recipients.

Authorization gating also matters. If a token requires authorization, the sender must be pre-authorized by the issuer before creating an escrow, and must be authorized to receive the tokens back if an expired escrow is canceled—regardless of who submits the cancellation. Separately, the recipient must be pre-authorized before an escrow can be finished.

XRPL supports time-based, conditional, and combination escrows. The flow is anchored around EscrowCreate to lock funds, EscrowFinish to release them when conditions are met, and EscrowCancel to return funds once an escrow expires. For token escrows specifically, an expiration time is mandatory.

The feature is not free. XRPL.org flags that escrow “requires two transactions” and that Crypto-Conditions increase fees. While the ledger supports Crypto-Conditions, it currently only supports PREIMAGE-SHA-256, and fulfillment verification raises EscrowFinish costs. The documentation gives a concrete minimum: an EscrowFinish with a fulfillment requires at least 330 drops of XRP plus an additional amount based on fulfillment size, with the formula scaling if fee settings change.

RippleX highlighted use cases spanning vesting and grants, conditional payments and OTC-style swaps, treasury workflows like legal holds and collateral, and tokenized rights and RWA-style unlocks. The common thread is a native, on-ledger “lock until X” mechanism now available to the token layer, useful for structured settlement, compliance-shaped flows, and predictable release conditions without relying on a third-party custodian or purely off-chain coordination.

At press time, XRP traded at $1.35.

Убытки краткосрочных держателей биткоина за последние семь дней достигли $2,3 млрд, что стало одним из крупнейших событий капитуляции со времен обвала 2021 года, сообщили аналитики CryptoQuant.

Майнер-одиночка добыл блок №936100 в сети Биткоина и получил 3,153 BTC награды (почти $213 000). Из этой суммы 0,028 BTC пришлось на комиссии за транзакции, сообщили в пуле AtlasPool.

On-chain analytics firm Glassnode has highlighted how the Bitcoin Spot Volume spiked during the price drawdown, but it has since cooled off.

Bitcoin Spot Volume Shot Up During The Selloff

In its latest weekly report, Glassnode has talked about the latest trend in the Bitcoin Spot Volume. This on-chain indicator measures the total amount of BTC becoming involved in trading activity on the various spot exchanges.

When the value of this metric rises, it means more of the cryptocurrency is being involved in spot trading. Such a trend can be a sign that interest in the asset is going up.

On the other hand, the indicator witnessing a decline indicates investor attention may be moving away from the cryptocurrency as less spot trading activity is taking place.

Now, here is the chart shared by Glassnode that shows how the 7-day moving average (MA) value of the Bitcoin Spot Volume has changed over the last few years:

As displayed in the above graph, the 7-day MA Bitcoin Spot Volume observed a notable spike alongside the price crash toward the $60,000 level. This would suggest that investors made a large amount of trades during the volatile move.

But what exactly did this activity correspond to? According to the report, it didn’t reflect a broad wave of fresh conviction buying. Instead, the Spot Volume increase was a result of traders panic reacting to the price drawdown.

This is backed by the trajectory followed by the indicator. From the chart, it’s apparent that while the initial Spot Volume increase was sharp, it was quick to cool down. The trend would imply that while the move drew attention from investors, it didn’t translate into sustained demand. “The lack of follow-through indicates that absorption remains shallow relative to the scale of selling pressure,” noted Glassnode.

In the past, price moves have generally only been sustainable for Bitcoin when backed by spot trading activity. With the recent Spot Volume increase likely only a sign of short-term repositioning and liquidation churn, the market is yet to see a wave of persistent volume. “For now, spot flows reflect engagement during stress, not a decisive shift toward constructive demand,” explained the analytics firm.

In the same report, Glassnode has also discussed how Bitcoin is currently looking from the perspective of the UTXO Realized Price Distribution (URPD), an indicator tracking the amount of the cryptocurrency that was last purchased at the various levels visited by it in the past.

As is visible in the chart, Bitcoin has recently found support inside a thick supply zone between $60,000 and $72,000. This band on the URPD formed as a result of investor accumulation in the first half of 2024. According to Glassnode, the fact that the price has stabilized here could suggest that “prior buyers in this range are actively defending their positions.”

BTC Price

Bitcoin has been on the way down again as its price has dropped to the $65,900 mark.

24-летнему жителю штата Коннектикут Элмину Редзепагичу (Elmin Redzepagic) предъявлены обвинения в криптомошенничестве, обмане инвесторов на сумму около $1 млн и присвоении клиентских средств.