Coinbase has obtained an investment services authorization in the United Kingdom, marking the company's biggest expansion of its product offering to date. The regulatory approval allows Coinbase to add equities and derivatives trading alongside its existing digital asset markets. The move positions the platform beyond a crypto-only exchange, aiming to build a broader financial hub for the UK capital markets.

China is reviewing possible new controls that would curb overseas access to its most advanced artificial intelligence models, underscoring the deepening tech standoff between Beijing and Washington. The measures, still said to be under internal consideration, would treat frontier AI capabilities as strategic national assets—similar to how China already manages rare earth resources and sensitive manufacturing know-how. The discussion comes alongside tighter oversight of AI talent and technology. Bloomberg reported on May 26 that China broadened travel restrictions for prominent AI researchers at private firms including DeepSeek and Alibaba. Under the updated rules, affected individuals must obtain government approval before traveling abroad or surrender their passports. These steps align with Beijing's push to build "independent and controllable" AI—systems designed to avoid reliance on foreign chips, foreign training data, or other external dependencies. The U.S. has moved in parallel from the opposite direction. Washington has expanded export controls on advanced semiconductors and introduced restrictions targeting AI model weights under a new classification, ECCN 4E091. In practice, that designation treats the trained parameters that make models functional as controlled technology. No crypto tokens or blockchain projects have been directly named in connection with the policy changes. Even so, the ripple effects for the AI-crypto overlap could be meaningful. A clampdown on overseas access to leading Chinese models could reduce Chinese participation in open-source ecosystems that have benefited from domestic research. DeepSeek, for example, has released models that gained significant traction in the global AI community. At the same time, broader government scrutiny could complicate operations for decentralized AI initiatives in either jurisdiction. If model weights are treated as controlled technology in both the U.S. and China, distributing them via a permissionless blockchain becomes far more difficult from a compliance standpoint. Semiconductor export controls add another constraint. Both crypto mining operators and AI inference providers depend on advanced chips. As access to those chips becomes increasingly segmented by geopolitical lines, compute-intensive activities are likely to face higher costs.

Revolut said it will delist the stablecoin USDT for users in the European Economic Area (EEA) by Aug. 31, as platforms move to meet the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) requirements. The company joins exchanges including Kraken and OKX in removing tokens that have not been approved under the new compliance framework.

The Bank of England said rapid progress in frontier artificial intelligence is amplifying risks to the stability of the financial system.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a pair of decisions that reshape the balance of power between the White House and independent regulators, with direct implications for crypto oversight. In Trump v. Cook, decided June 29, the Court ruled 5-4 that President Trump cannot remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook at will. The decision keeps in place the "for-cause" removal protections established under the Federal Reserve Act, which set staggered 14-year terms for Fed governors. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that allowing at-will firing would effectively erase those statutory protections. In the companion case, Trump v. Slaughter, the Court went the other way, holding that the president may dismiss commissioners leading other independent agencies without cause. The ruling overturns Humphrey's Executor, a precedent dating to 1935. The practical result: leadership at agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission now serves at the president's pleasure, while the Federal Reserve remains uniquely insulated. The Court's narrow carve-out for the Fed, without a clearly stated constitutional principle underpinning that independence, leaves room for future litigation. Implications for crypto markets On monetary policy, the Fed's preserved independence may offer some stability. Bitcoin has often reacted sharply to shifts in rate expectations and broader policy signals. The Trump administration has previously pressed Chair Jerome Powell on interest rates, making the Court's reaffirmation of for-cause protections more than a technical point. Markets gain at least a measure of confidence that monetary policy will be less directly subject to day-to-day political turnover. Regulation is where the shockwaves could be larger. With expanded presidential authority over SEC and CFTC leadership, crypto policy could pivot faster and more dramatically. An administration seeking lighter-touch oversight can appoint like-minded leaders with fewer institutional constraints. A future administration skeptical of crypto could just as quickly install regulators inclined toward tougher enforcement. What investors should watch next When agency heads can be fired without cause, they have strong incentives to align enforcement and rulemaking priorities with the sitting president's agenda. For crypto companies operating on multi-year development timelines, that adds significant uncertainty and makes long-range planning harder. Two near-term signals matter most: whether the administration moves to replace any current SEC or CFTC commissioners now that the legal barrier has fallen, and whether the Fed's independence holds in practice or faces new forms of political pressure that stop short of removals.

THE BLOCK reports that Coinbase has obtained authorization for MiFID investment services in the UK. The approval clears a path for the exchange to offer derivatives and equities trading in addition to cryptocurrency services.

Two users have filed suit against prediction-market platform Polymarket in New York state court, alleging the company improperly denied payouts on winning positions tied to a market about Strategy's Bitcoin sales, according to CoinDesk. The complaint points to Strategy's disclosures to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showing the company sold 32 Bitcoin during the reporting period that ended May 31, 2026. Despite that, the market was ultimately resolved as "No," and holders of "Yes" shares were not paid. Plaintiffs William Wood and Thomas Bush say the market asked whether Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) would sell any Bitcoin before May 31, 2026. They contend the market initially identified Strategy's SEC filings as the primary settlement source, implying that a sale disclosed in an 8-K would support a "Yes" result. They allege Polymarket later issued additional clarifications that effectively shifted the standard from whether a sale occurred to whether a sale was publicly confirmed before the deadline, then used that framing to settle "No." The suit argues the dispute is not about the underlying facts but about settlement criteria being changed after the outcome was knowable. The plaintiffs maintain the core question should be whether the sale took place, with SEC documents serving as evidence rather than redefining the timing of the event. They add that allowing interpretation changes after the fact would weaken Polymarket's stated mechanism of operating under fixed rules. The case asserts multiple claims, including breach of contract, unjust enrichment, misleading commercial practices, and false advertising. It seeks damages, attorneys' fees, interest, and injunctive relief, and also names executives and affiliated entities. Filed July 3 in the New York State Supreme Court, the lawsuit names Adventure One QSS Inc., Blockratize Inc., Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan, Chief Marketing Officer Matthew Modabber, and other unnamed defendants. The complaint also notes that while Polymarket uses UMA's Optimistic Oracle for contract settlement, the platform controls market-rule drafting, supplemental clarifications, page management, and question framing, arguing disputes cannot be fully pinned on the oracle process. The report said Polymarket has recently faced heightened regulatory scrutiny. Bloomberg previously reported that the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating parts of the company's operations, including its social media activity.

Coinbase has secured authorisation from the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to provide investment services to UK customers, covering products such as derivatives and equities. The approval marks a step beyond the firm's core crypto offering, positioning Coinbase to operate as a fully regulated, multi-asset exchange for UK users.

The Bank of England is preparing to loosen parts of its leverage ratio regime, a move that could materially increase UK banks' capacity to hold government bonds. Details are expected in the Financial Stability Report due on July 7, 2026. At the heart of the review is how the leverage ratio treats bank assets. The current minimum leverage ratio is 3.25%, and it applies a blunt approach: assets receive the same balance sheet treatment regardless of risk, meaning a corporate loan and a UK gilt count equally. That structure can discourage banks from expanding gilt holdings. Under the plan being considered, unencumbered gilts would be excluded from leverage ratio calculations. In practice, "unencumbered" refers to gilts that have not been pledged as collateral in other transactions. Banks have already started sizing the potential impact. Barclays estimates that removing gilts from the leverage metric could add up to £150 billion of capacity to the gilt market. Lloyds forecasts a smaller but still significant uplift, penciling in roughly £30 billion of additional gilt demand and at least £1 billion a year in savings for the government. Analysts suggest that, aggregated across the sector, the change could lower annual debt servicing costs by close to £2.5 billion. The proposed tweak would follow other recent regulatory recalibration. In December 2025, the BoE reduced capital requirements to a 13% Tier 1 benchmark. The leverage review is seen as the next step, echoing adjustments made by US regulators in late 2025. Concerns remain over the risks of broad exemptions. Former BoE Deputy Governor Sam Woods has warned that sweeping gilt exclusions could be "highly risky." Leverage ratios were designed as a simple backstop after 2008, when risk-weighted frameworks failed to capture vulnerabilities. The UK gilt market also experienced acute stress in September 2022, when liability-driven investment strategies unraveled and the BoE stepped in with emergency bond purchases. Critics also point to concentration risk: if leverage penalties are removed, banks could tilt more heavily into gilts, leaving the sector more exposed to a single asset class. For investors, the near-term market read-through would be downward pressure on gilt yields if the reform is implemented, as stronger demand tends to lift bond prices and push yields lower. UK bank shares could also benefit, with Barclays and Lloyds among the most vocal supporters given the balance-sheet capacity that could be freed up. Fixed-income investors are expected to watch the July 7 FSR closely as a possible turning point for the gilt market.