Saylor Floats a Strategy Buyback as MSTR Falls More Than 73% in Past Year | CoinDesk Daily

Michael Saylor told Strategy shareholders to prepare for difficult years ahead, and while he said a share buyback is not a current priority, he left the door open. He indicated that if MSTR trades at a deep enough discount to its net asset value, the company could repurchase its own stock. MSTR is down approximately 36% so far this year and roughly 73% from one year ago, giving the buyback scenario real practical relevance rather than treating it as a remote hypothetical.

The US Treasury put forward proposed federal definitions of what it means to issue a US stablecoin, framing the move as part of implementing the Genius Act. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the administration is moving quickly to give businesses regulatory certainty and to keep the United States positioned as the global center of crypto activity. The industry has 60 days to submit comments on the proposed rules, meaning the framework is not yet final and could shift based on feedback.

The biggest unresolved question in the stablecoin proposal is how foreign issuers will be treated, with Tether, the current market leader, being the most consequential case. The proposed definitions focus on what it means to issue a US stablecoin, but they do not yet clearly resolve whether and how a non-US issuer of Tether's scale fits within or outside that framework. That ambiguity matters enormously for competitive dynamics in the stablecoin market, since Tether's treatment will determine whether foreign issuers face meaningful restrictions or can continue operating largely as they do now.

South Korea ordered access to Polymarket to be blocked, making it one of more than 30 jurisdictions that have now restricted the prediction market platform. South Korean regulators concluded that Polymarket facilitates gambling under the country's criminal law and encourages speculative behavior on events that users cannot control. The decision reflects a broader pattern of regulatory hostility toward prediction markets that has accumulated across dozens of countries, suggesting Polymarket faces a structural access problem in large parts of the world rather than an isolated dispute.

Polymarket pushed back against the South Korean ruling by arguing that it had already removed Korean language services, does not support the South Korean won, and operates through non-custodial peer-to-peer smart contracts that place it outside the scope of traditional gambling regulation. Regulators rejected that argument directly, pointing out that Polymarket still sets the trading rules, handles deposits and withdrawals, and collects fees, which in their view makes the platform a gambling operator regardless of the technical structure of its contracts. The exchange illustrates a recurring tension between crypto-native legal arguments based on decentralization and non-custody, and regulators who focus on functional control rather than technical architecture.