The Daily Wolf | Crypto's Biggest Week in Regulation Just Happened

Crypto-company bank approvals and U.S. on-chain derivatives are becoming more routine, Scott Milker argues, as digital assets move further into mainstream financial conversations. The week’s developments span regulated trading, bank charters, stablecoin rules and prediction markets, but several initiatives remain conditional, exploratory or short on regulatory clarity.

Hyperliquid selected Payward, the parent company of Kraken, as its initial U.S. partner for a CFTC-regulated HIP-3 deployment serving eligible U.S. clients. The offering still requires regulatory approval, and Hyperliquid could work with other partners later. Milker says Hyperliquid contracts already attract substantial global trading, including institutional participation, and provide around-the-clock price discovery. He predicts U.S. users may eventually be able to trade perpetual swaps tied to pre-IPO companies such as Anthropic; that remains a forecast, not an announced product.

Ripple received final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for Ripple National Trust Bank, following conditional approval in December 2025. The charter permits the bank to custody and manage segregated reserves for RLUSD, which has about $2.5 billion in circulating supply. It does not authorize ordinary deposits, commercial lending or mortgage handling, and RLUSD remains regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services. The approval therefore expands Ripple’s role in reserve management without making the trust bank a general-purpose commercial bank.

BlackRock, SBI Holdings and Startale signed an exploratory memorandum of understanding to test connections between a yen-denominated trust stablecoin and other tokenized assets, including tokenized money-market funds. The agreement is a study of potential connections, not a launched product. Its significance in the episode is as a signal of institutional interest in linking stablecoins with tokenized financial assets, while the practical outcome remains undecided.

Binance said it filed an application in Brazil to become a virtual asset service provider on October 23, ahead of the October 30 deadline. Milker says Brazil’s new rules will result in 22 token delistings and restrictions on opening new positions in eight products. Among the affected tokens he names USD, USDC, Montre, GMT, ZIL and STORGE. Brazilian customers’ payment accounts are scheduled to migrate to a local brokerage by October 29. He expects Binance’s Brazilian operations to become compliant under the new framework.

The NBA named Kalshi and Polymarket its preferred prediction-market exchanges, giving both companies NBA intellectual-property and marketing rights. DraftKings also had its license updated to offer NBA prediction markets. Milker says the U.S. still lacks regulatory clarity about what prediction markets are and what they can do, leaving an important uncertainty even as major sports-related commercial arrangements advance. Separately, Canada opened consultation on draft stablecoin rules that would bar issuers from paying yield on balances, either directly or through third parties, while permitting transaction-based rewards. Milker characterizes the proposal as almost exactly like the U.S. GENIUS Act.

Zcash co-founder Bo proposed ending grant subsidies and redirecting the estimated 8% block-reward subsidy to a network sustainability mechanism, while leaving ZCG reserves intact. Zcash has a $125 million treasury, according to Milker, but he says the proposed mechanism’s design and use of redirected funds have not been specified. The proposal thus points to a possible change in how the network funds development, but leaves open both how the replacement mechanism would work and what it would support.