Tech

President Donald Trump has granted a pardon to Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the founder of Binance, after months of behind-the-scenes efforts by Zhao and his allies to secure clemency.

A new legal filing alleges that a cryptocurrency promoted in January by U.S. First Lady Melania Trump was part of a sophisticated scheme that used celebrity association to lend legitimacy to token launches, according to Wired. 

Canada’s financial intelligence agency has fined Vancouver-based cryptocurrency exchange Cryptomus nearly C$177 million, saying the firm failed to report thousands of transactions that may have involved sanctions evasion and money laundering tied to fraud, ransomware and child sexual abuse material.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has filed a High Court lawsuit against crypto exchange HTX, alleging the platform unlawfully promoted cryptoasset services to consumers in breach of the country’s financial promotions regime, the Financial Times reported. 

U.S. regulators have granted preliminary and conditional approval for Erebor, a new national bank founded this year by technologists Palmer Luckey and Joe Lonsdale in a move pitched as filling the void left by Silicon Valley Bank’s 2023 collapse, the Financial Times reported. 

UK regulators are holding up Revolut’s full banking license amid concerns that the fintech firm’s risk controls are not scaling fast enough with its rapid overseas growth, the Financial Times reported. 

Microsoft is warning organizations about an active campaign dubbed “Payroll Pirate” that hijacks employee accounts on cloud HR platforms and diverts direct-deposit paychecks, Ars Technica reported.

UK digital bank Monzo is weighing a fresh attempt to secure a US banking license, four years after abandoning its previous bid when talks with regulators stalled, according to the Financial Times. 

North Korea’s government-backed IT workers are quietly infiltrating global tech firms and contractor platforms, earning steady crypto salaries that are laundered through a sprawling network of intermediaries to fund the regime’s weapons programs, according to new analysis from Chainalysis.

International payments cooperative Swift will launch a permissioned blockchain to route transactions among global banks as part of a bid to modernize cross-border payments and blunt the rise of dollar-pegged stablecoins.