Circle closed a 21-day stretch adding an OCC charter, 680 IBM patent families, and an NYDFS trust license on $71.8B of USDC. The moat thesis meets a distribution war.
Circle buys IBM's patent stack, BNY moves $8.6T of records on-chain, and ten European banks push €700M through RL1. The plumbing era has started.
Unlimit joined the CySEC MiCA register, but issuing an e-money token still needs an EMI license, putting euro stablecoins under an ECB that's openly hostile.
Aave is winding down 75 reserves and six blockchain deployments, affecting $98M supplied and $15.6M borrowed. A structural bet on liquidity concentration over reach.
Base activated Azul on mainnet, cutting empty blocks by 99% and pairing TEE with ZK proofs. Its first solo upgrade since leaving the Superchain.
BitMEX, BitMart, Movement Labs and Storj all fell in a single week. With spot volume at a 25-month low, the exchange business model is breaking in real time.
FATF says 93% of jurisdictions have never enforced AML rules against a DeFi platform. That gap is about to close, and the bill lands on identifiable operators.