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In brief Annual MENA blockchain transactions reached an estimated $350 billion by 2025–2026, up from about $100 billion in 2022. The institute says the Iran conflict pushed a growing share of regional capital into digital assets. Investors shifted toward Bitcoin after an initial sell-off, while Gulf crypto firms continued operating during the fighting. The Iran conflict is pushing a growing share of regional capital into digital assets as investors seek to preserve wealth and move money during disruption, according to the Bitcoin Policy Institute.In a report published Friday, the group estimates that annual blockchain transaction value across the Middle East…

The U.S. Treasury Department says massive amounts of money tied to Iran are still moving through American banks each year. The allegations come as the Treasury moves to restrict an Emirati branch of Banque Misr from accessing U.S. correspondent accounts. The branch kept dollar accounts at three U.S. financial institutions, although the Treasury does not name them, reports The Wall Street Journal. Officials allege that the Emirati branch processed as much as $1.8 billion for firms connected to Iranian shadow banking from January of 2024 through June of 2026. Iran still uses foreign banks in places such as the United Arab…

President Trump is now suggesting that the moon belongs to America. His new Truth Social post features an image of the lunar surface captioned “The Moon Is Ours” with an American flag. Minutes earlier in the same posting session, Trump shared AI-generated images of the new U.S. Space Force service dress uniforms in a color palette of space gray and midnight black. . Trump’s assertion rubs against the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which the U.S. helped draft and which more than 100 countries signed. The treaty states that outer space and celestial bodies are not subject to national appropriation…

In brief Bottomline, a top-three SWIFT services provider that processes more than $16 trillion in payments annually, announced a deal with Chainlink to connect its 600-plus bank customers to blockchain settlement. LINK touched $13.64 on September 7, its highest price since January 18, and outpaced every other top-10 cryptocurrency by market cap over the past 24 hours while Bitcoin stayed capped below $80,000. Chainlink’s CCIP will move tokenized value across blockchains and its CRE will orchestrate the payment workflow, letting banks keep sending standard messages instead of building new infrastructure. Bitcoin is back under $80,000 today, down about 1%, after…

In brief Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau says gangs store crypto wallet seed phrases and private keys in rented vaults alongside cash, watches and passports. It has reported the practice to the government committee preparing Ireland for new EU anti-money laundering rules. Cash still dominates, and the bureau’s chief says criminal use of crypto in Ireland remains “basic.” Organized crime gangs in Ireland are renting vaults to store the private keys and seed phrases that control crypto wallets, alongside cash, luxury watches and handbags, the head of the Criminal Assets Bureau has said.Detective Chief Superintendent Michael Gubbins, who runs the bureau, the Irish…

In brief Liquid disabled its bridge nodes on Sunday after about 4,000 BTC left the federation wallet that backs L-BTC. The withdrawal used SideSwap’s peg-out key, which Liquid says was not compromised, pointing instead to a bug in Elements. The wallet now holds roughly 200 BTC, around 5% of what it held before. Blockstream’s Liquid sidechain has been paused since Sunday, after about 4,000 BTC worth roughly $320 million left the federation wallet that backs every L-BTC in circulation.SideSwap, a federation member running a peg-out service, said a customer sent it 4,000 L-BTC at 14:05 UTC. It burned them under…

Federal authorities have charged a Phoenix resident with helping divert millions in public funds from an Ohio charter school into personal luxuries including luxury vehicles and a high-end Miami rental. Jonathan Larry Ballew, 62, of Phoenix allegedly teamed up with the school’s former operator to submit phony invoices from shell companies for services that were never delivered, triggering more than $8 million in improper payments, says the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio. Prosecutors say the pair divided over $4 million in kickbacks from the billing that ran from 2021 through 2024. Leondo Ramone Davenport, 50, of Cincinnati,…

In brief FinCEN analyzed 33,904 suspicious activity reports filed between September 2023 and December 2025. About 1,300 institutions filed them, with crypto money services businesses reporting most often and banks reporting the largest sums. Older Americans were not disproportionately victimized, contradicting a common assumption about these scams. The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has tied roughly $12.7 billion in suspicious financial activity to crypto investment scams run out of Southeast Asian compounds, in an analysis and an alert published Thursday.Some 1,300 institutions filed the 33,904 reports, covering September 2023 to December 2025. Money services businesses, mostly crypto firms, filed…

In brief Trezor said Friday that another 67,000 U.S. customers were caught in the ShipMonk breach it disclosed last month. The records cover orders placed between November 2019 and August 2021, and include names, phone numbers and home addresses. Trezor says it repeatedly received written confirmation from ShipMonk that the data had been deleted. Another 67,000 Trezor customers had their names, email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses and order numbers exposed in the breach at shipping provider ShipMonk, the hardware wallet maker said on Friday.All of them are in the U.S., and all placed orders between November 2019 and August…

A Houston genetics testing laboratory is notifying patients and staff about a cyberattack that exposed their personal and medical information. Baylor Genetics says the breach occurred in a limited portion of its IT environment. An HHS filing lists 2,810,878 people affected. The company detected suspicious activity on or around June 15th and later confirmed unauthorized access between June 11th and June 17th. Affected data includes names, dates of birth, laboratory test results, medical testing details and in limited cases health insurance information or Social Security numbers for patients. Certain current and former employees also had Social Security numbers, government identification and…

A US financial giant is accused of secretly intercepting the online communications of its website visitors through embedded tracking technologies. Plaintiff Franceska Herrera filed the suit against Citigroup Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, reports Top Class Actions. The complaint alleges the bank and financial services firm deployed third-party tracking pixels that captured users’ page navigations, searches and content interests in real time. Herrera claims this happened without notice or consent and supported commercial goals including behavioral profiling and monetization through targeted advertising. The complaint says. “During her use of the website, [the] plaintiff navigated…