violation

The Financial Intelligence Unit of India (FIU-IND) issued non-compliance notices to 15 offshore virtual digital asset service providers under Article 13 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act, including Weex, Blofin, Rezorex, Bitunix, DigiFinex, Toobit, XT.com, Latoken, WOO X, Pionex, ChangeNow, SimpleSwap, Fixedfloat, WhiteBIT, and Guardarian. These platforms are accused of providing services to Indian users without registering with FIU-IND.Since March 2023, India has included cryptocurrency platforms in the same anti-money laundering regulatory framework as banks, requiring any platform serving Indian customers, regardless of whether they have an office in India, to complete registration and fulfill user verification, record-keeping, and suspicious transaction reporting obligations. FIU-IND also warned the public that cryptocurrency products and NFTs are unregulated and carry extremely high risks, and related trading losses may not be eligible for regulatory relief.This action comes amid reports of Indian users converting stablecoins like USDT into gift cards through platforms in Sweden, Germany, and Singapore to purchase groceries, fuel, and gold in India. Previously, FIU-IND had issued notices to nine major offshore exchanges, including Binance, Kraken, and KuCoin, in December 2023, after which Binance completed its registration and paid a fine of 1.882 billion rupees.

According to Decrypt, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina of the Ingham County Circuit Court in Michigan has issued a preliminary injunction against the prediction market platform Kalshi, requiring it to stop offering sports betting-related contracts to Michigan residents. The court found that Kalshi's related business is essentially "sports betting disguised as investment opportunities."Under the order, Kalshi must block in-state users through a third-party geolocation service licensed by the Michigan betting regulatory agency, or face a daily fine of $500,000. The injunction also prohibits it from allowing account registration, deposits, advertising, and similar sports betting product features for Michigan residents until a final judgment is made in the case.

According to a Reuters report, Polymarket's new Global Head of Research and Intelligence, Shana Bautista (former analyst at Coinbase, former investigator at the FBI), stated that as the U.S. midterm elections approach, Polymarket has established a system to identify unusual trading activities and will continue to prevent U.S. users from using its international platform to comply with the settlement agreement reached with U.S. regulators in 2022.In addition, Polymarket plans to launch a new webpage to publicly disclose the operational details of market integrity review mechanisms such as machine learning, blockchain analysis, and trading monitoring, and revealed that it has referred over 100 cases to law enforcement agencies.

Fox Business crypto reporters posted on the X platform that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation are advancing the finalization of a rule to define "unsafe or unsound practices" in bank regulation. This term has not been clearly defined for years, primarily relying on the broad discretion of bank examiners.Under this rule, when regulators determine that a practice is "unsafe or unsound," they must link it to actual illegal conduct or significant financial risk, thereby reducing the likelihood of pressuring banks serving legitimate clients, including crypto companies, based on vague reputational or procedural issues. This rule marks another important step towards further dismantling "Operation Chokepoint 2."

The People's Bank of China Shenzhen Branch, Shenzhen Securities Regulatory Bureau, Municipal Internet Information Office, and Municipal Local Financial Supervision Administration continue to carry out special rectifications, urging local website platforms to strictly implement their main responsibilities and legally handle a number of illegal self-media accounts.Some typical cases include: "USDT Merchant Group Chat," "Gather Together to Play Virtual Currency," "Search for Bitcoin," "WeChat Quick Exchange," "Zhongchain Laojiu," "Medicine Breaks a Good Sleep," "Little Goldfish 9884," "User 0767527971," and other accounts that illegally provided marketing and promotional information related to virtual currency business activities within the country, enticing the public to participate in illegal financial activities related to virtual currency. According to the relevant policy provisions such as the "Notice on Further Preventing and Handling Risks Related to Virtual Currency," the aforementioned accounts have been permanently closed and dealt with by the platform in accordance with the law and agreements.

U.S. Congressman Ritchie Torres has requested the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate whether the upcoming Truth API from Truth Social's parent company Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) violates federal securities laws, and to assess whether it involves issues such as market manipulation, investor protection, and conflicts of interest.According to previous reports, the Truth API will launch on August 1, providing paying customers with real-time data access to public posts from popular Truth Social accounts, with authorization fees reaching up to $100,000 per month.

According to Cointelegraph, Vietnam issued Decree No. 284/2026/NĐ-CP on July 16, officially establishing an administrative penalty framework for cryptocurrency violations, providing a legal basis for the upcoming regulated cryptocurrency market.According to the decree, investors trading on unlicensed platforms face fines of up to 50 million Vietnamese dong (approximately $1,900); unauthorized issuance of crypto assets and serious anti-money laundering (AML) violations can incur fines of up to 200 million Vietnamese dong (approximately $7,700); authorities are also authorized to suspend related activities, revoke licenses, and confiscate assets.The decree will officially take effect on September 1. In terms of background, Vietnam opened applications for domestic cryptocurrency exchange licenses in January this year, and Deputy Minister Nguyen Duc Chi previously stated that the first batch of regulated activities is expected to launch in the third quarter.

According to the Securities Times, Xiaohongshu has launched a special governance action for certified professional accounts in the financial sector starting from June 3. Based on relevant laws and regulations as well as platform rules, financial certifications are only issued to institutions holding compliant licenses. The nicknames of certified professional accounts on the platform must strictly match the actual business scope of the certified entity and must not obtain certification marks through false or misleading information. In the past week, Xiaohongshu has dealt with over 1,500 non-compliant financial professional accounts and will continue to comprehensively strengthen the public verification and validation mechanism, conducting regular inspections and handling of existing accounts.Staff introduced that since May, the Xiaohongshu platform has dealt with a total of 31,000 accounts involved in financial sector violations and marketing accounts without financial-related qualifications, including 539 notes and 146 comments related to illegal inducement of cross-border investment issues; 141 related notes regarding the low-priced resale of foreign investment bank research reports, and freezing of 132 related products. In addition, the platform has also handled over 130 pieces of suspected illegal information related to gold financial marketing promotion and domestic promotion of overseas platforms.

According to a report by Reuters citing the German newspaper Handelsblatt, the European Union is planning to impose fines in the hundreds of millions of euros on Google's parent company Alphabet in response to its alleged violations of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Sources indicate that a related decision is nearing completion and is expected to be announced before the summer recess, potentially becoming the largest fine issued by the EU under the DMA.The investigation officially began in March 2025, focusing on whether Google prioritizes its own services in search results, thereby harming fair competition in the market. The European Commission stated that its primary goal is to ensure corporate compliance rather than simply imposing penalties, but if the corrective measures do not meet regulatory requirements, enforcement procedures will continue. Google responded that the adjustments made to its search products in accordance with DMA requirements have significantly impacted user experience and expressed a desire to reach a resolution with regulators.

Keone Hon, co-founder of Monad, posted on platform X stating that the Monad account was frozen without any warning, and he speculates that it was due to a system error. Monad has not engaged in any abnormal operations or violations of API usage. They have currently contacted the support team of platform X through various channels and expect the account to be restored soon.

The Federal Court of Australia ordered Binance's Australian derivatives division (i.e., Oztures Trading Pty Ltd) to pay a fine of AUD 10 million (approximately USD 6.9 million).During the period from 2022 to 2023, the entity incorrectly classified over 85% of local customers as wholesale investors, resulting in 524 retail customers being exposed to high-risk crypto derivatives without statutory consumer protections, leading to trading losses of approximately AUD 8,660,000 (about USD 5.9 million) and fee losses of AUD 3,900,000 (about USD 2.7 million). Joe Longo, Chairman of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), stated that Binance failed to establish basic compliance review mechanisms and incorrectly approved hundreds of wholesale investor applications. According to the fact statement submitted to the court, Binance acknowledged flaws in its customer onboarding process, allowing applicants to repeatedly take the eligibility test until they passed, and that senior compliance personnel inadequately reviewed application materials. Binance admitted to six violations, including failing to provide product disclosure statements to retail customers, not conducting target market assessments, and not maintaining a compliant internal dispute resolution system. This fine is in addition to approximately AUD 13.1 million (about USD 9 million) in customer compensation previously supervised by ASIC. The entity's Australian financial services license was revoked in April 2023.

The founder of OpenClaw, Peter Steinberger, responded on social media regarding "a user being banned after mentioning Bitcoin in OpenClaw's Discord," stating, "We have strict server rules, and users agree to comply with them upon entering the server. One of these rules is a complete ban on mentioning cryptocurrencies."Afterward, Peter Steinberger inquired about the user's account name, indicating that he would manually re-add them to OpenClaw's Discord group.

X product lead and Solana advisor Nikita Bier revealed in a post on the X platform that the platform will launch a disclosure feature next week. This move aims to warn that there are undisclosed advertising contents on the platform, and it also means that X may require users to explicitly disclose paid promotional posts and take measures such as suspending accounts that do not comply with relevant regulations.Nikita Bier pointed out that there are currently some promotional contents on the platform that are not marked as commercial collaborations or advertisements, which may mislead users. If the new regulations are implemented, X may strengthen the management of transparency in commercial promotional content and enhance compliance review mechanisms. It is reported that Nikita Bier has already requested further disclosure of relevant advertising information in replies to paid promotional tweets on the prediction market platform Kalshi, warning that accounts will be banned if not complied with.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced that the cryptocurrency trading platform Paxful Holdings Inc. has been fined $4 million for failing to establish effective anti-money laundering controls.Prosecutors alleged that the platform has long allowed illegal funds related to fraud, prostitution, and human trafficking to flow through it, profiting from these activities. The Department of Justice stated that Paxful was aware that some customer funds were derived from criminal activities but continued to provide services, using lax anti-money laundering regulations as a selling point to attract users. The investigation also pointed out that the platform processed cryptocurrency transactions for websites including Backpage, which is believed to have been used to post advertisements related to prostitution, involving minors. Data shows that from 2015 to 2022, approximately $17 million worth of Bitcoin flowed through Paxful wallets to related websites, with the platform earning at least $2.7 million in profits from this. The Department of Justice stated that Paxful's founder even referred to the resulting business growth as the "Backpage Effect."

According to Yonhap News Agency, the first case of violation of the "Virtual Asset User Protection Act" in South Korea has been sentenced. The Seoul Southern District Court sentenced the CEO of a cryptocurrency trading company to 3 years in prison for manipulating coin prices, along with a fine of 500 million won (approximately 385,000 USD) and the recovery of about 846 million won (approximately 650,000 USD). However, considering Mr. Lee's active cooperation during the trial and his prior detention, the court decided not to revoke his bail and did not detain him.The court found that between July and October 2024, he used an automated trading program to inflate trading volume and repeatedly placed false buy orders to manipulate prices, with improper gains amounting to about 7.1 billion won (approximately 5.46 million USD). This case is the first to be transferred by the prosecution through the financial regulatory "fast track" since the law took effect in July 2024.

According to CoinDesk, India's federal budget for the fiscal year 2026-27 maintains the existing 30% cryptocurrency capital gains tax and 1% withholding tax, disappointing industry groups that had sought tax reductions. The government did not adjust the tax rates but proposed new penalties for entities that fail to properly report cryptocurrency transactions under Section 509 of the Income Tax Act starting from April 1, 2026.Failure to submit the required reports will incur a daily fine of 200 rupees (approximately $2.2) until the non-compliance ends. If the submitted information is incorrect, or if errors are not corrected after being discovered, a fixed penalty of 50,000 rupees (approximately $545) will be imposed. Officials stated that this move aims to strengthen compliance, but market participants warn that it will continue to create friction for traders.

The Federal Court of Australia ruled that BPS Financial was fined AUD 14 million (approximately USD 9.7 million) for operating the Qoin wallet project without obtaining the necessary licenses and for making misleading statements to consumers.

According to Cointelegraph, the UAE's newly implemented Federal Decree No. 6 brings decentralized finance (DeFi) and Web3 projects under regulatory oversight, requiring platforms that provide payment, trading, lending, custody, or investment services to obtain a license from the Central Bank of the UAE.The law will take effect on September 16, 2025, ending the "code-only" regulatory exemption defense, with violators facing fines of up to 1 billion dirhams (approximately $272 million) and potential criminal sanctions. Legal experts clarify that the regulation does not prohibit individuals from using self-custody wallets but expands the regulatory scope for businesses. Project teams must complete compliance adjustments before the transition period deadline in September 2026.

Regarding the community mention that "Binance has begun to recover improper profits from the Alpha airdrop due to violations, and several accounts of suspected studio Alpha airdrop hunters have been frozen with assets exceeding $10,000." He Yi responded to confirm this event and stated that ordinary users are not affected.