⛔️ Up to $16,000,000 worth of Russians' funds could be stuck on international crypto exchanges after new sanctions by Great Britain against Russian exchangers and payment services.

Transfers related to Rapira, Aifory, and other platforms were hit — such transactions began to be marked as high-risk, and accounts on Bybit, Binance, Bitget, and other exchanges — sent for verification or blocking.

A separate risk is ABCEX (76 offices in the Russian Federation). According to data from sanction documents, the platform might appear there under a different name, so some users might not have understood that their transfers were connected to a sanctioned service. Now, such transactions might look like "dirty" funds to international exchanges, even if a person simply used a regular exchanger before.

It is worth noting that restrictions can be imposed even for transactions that went through these services several years ago.

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⚖️ The State Duma of the Russian Federation **adopted** in the first reading a draft law on punishment for illegal mining — this refers to cases where, as a result of such activity, large-scale income (over 3.5 million rubles) has been obtained, or damage of a similar amount has been caused to citizens, organizations, or the state.

Such crimes will be punishable by a fine of up to 1.5 million rubles, mandatory work for 480 hours, or forced labor for up to 2 years.

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🇮🇹 Banca Sella, one of Italy's largest banks with assets of €34 billion, became the first bank in the country with a license for storing and transferring crypto assets.

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⚡️ Polymarket wants to introduce mandatory identity verification (KYC) for traders amid regulatory pressure and sanctions risks.

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🇮🇷 The US carried out a new strike on Iran and imposed sanctions on the agency controlling the Strait of Hormuz, while Israel conducted one of its most powerful attacks on Lebanon recently.

Against the backdrop of escalation, the crypto market sharply declined — almost $500 million in long positions were liquidated in an hour, and Bitcoin fell below $72,900.

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🏦 Bank for International Settlements (BIS) together with the NY Fed, ECB, Bank of Japan, JPMorgan, Visa, and Mastercard is launching tests of real cross-border blockchain payments.

Essentially, the largest banks and payment giants are starting to test how blockchain can work for international transfers with real money.

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🇰🇷 Samsung invests over $400,000,000 in the operator of the Korean crypto exchange Upbit.

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🇷🇺 The Central Bank of the Russian Federation wants to strictly limit banks' investments in crypto, with a limit of no more than 1% of the banking group's capital.

When calculating capital, crypto assets will be considered almost maximally risky — with a weight of 1250%, because the regulator sees threats not only in volatility, but also in the possible blocking of such assets.

Client crypto will not fall under the limit, if the bank simply stores it as a custodian, but security requirements will still be strengthened due to the risks of hacks and loss of access.

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⚖️ A Google employee was charged with using internal company data for betting on Polymarket — according to US authorities, he earned approximately $1,200,000 with almost no risk, by knowing future Google Search trends in advance.

The engineer tried to cover his tracks using mixers and exchangers, but the FBI linked his wallets to his real identity — now he faces charges of fraud and money laundering.

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⛔️ A malfunction occurred on the Sui blockchain — new blocks are not being produced for more than 2 hours.

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🗽 The U.S. government is gradually dumping crypto confiscated from FTX — over the past 2 days, authorities transferred approximately $5,300,000 in assets to Coinbase.

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🏪 The world's largest derivatives exchange CME is switching to 24/7 trading of crypto futures and options.

Because of this, the famous "CME gap" may disappear — price gaps in Bitcoin after weekends, which many traders have relied on for years in market predictions.

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