US Tightens Stablecoin ID Rules as CME Sues CFTC, HIVE Lands $220M AI Deal

Crypto News

The Federal Reserve, Treasury, OCC, FDIC, the National Credit Union Administration and FinCEN jointly proposed a rule requiring stablecoin issuers to verify customer identities under the same Bank Secrecy Act standards applied to banks. Released Thursday as part of implementing the GENIUS Act signed into law in July 2025, the draft mandates issuers verify names, addresses and birthdates, keep records, and screen customers against terrorist watchlists. Former Fed Chair Jerome Powell backed the proposal, while current Chair Kevin Warsh abstained without explanation. The measure opens to a 60-day public comment period once filed in the Federal Register, tightening anti-money-laundering obligations across dollar-pegged stablecoins.

CME Group filed suit against the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Chair Michael Selig in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, challenging the agency’s approval of crypto perpetual futures. The complaint argues the CFTC unlawfully treated perpetual “futures” as “swaps” with expiration dates, violating the Commodity Exchange Act and overriding congressional definitions. The dispute traces to a May 29 notice approving Bitcoin-linked perpetuals for Kalshi and a no-action position for Coinbase. CME contends Selig acted unilaterally without a full five-member commission. A CFTC spokesperson dismissed the complaint as frivolous lawfare, escalating a regulatory clash over how derivatives markets should handle perpetual contracts.

HIVE Digital Technologies said its AI subsidiary BUZZ HPC signed a three-year GPU cloud contract worth roughly $220 million to support AI startup Cohere. The deal will deploy 2,304 Nvidia Grace Blackwell GPUs at a Bell Canada data center in British Columbia, powering Cohere’s enterprise and government AI models. HIVE expects about $70 million in annual recurring revenue once live, lifting contracted high-performance-computing revenue past $100 million. The company plans to fund the purchase from a $115 million convertible note completed in April. The pivot accelerates as HIVE’s Bitcoin treasury fell to 150 BTC from 481 BTC a quarter earlier, with shares up roughly 9% on the news.

Privacy protocol Aztec suffered its second exploit in under a week, with attackers draining about $2.15 million from a deprecated private rollup bridge. On-chain data shows the theft comprised 1,158 Ether, 150,000 Dai and 0.46 renBTC, executed through a forged rollup proof that tricked the contract into releasing reserves. Aztec Labs confirmed the funds came from an immutable smart contract for a payment product deprecated in 2022, leaving the team without admin keys or any ability to pause transactions. The breach of the Aztec Network follows a separate $2.1 million incident days earlier, renewing concern over abandoned infrastructure still holding legacy user assets.

Crypto exchanges are racing to convert World Cup attention into trading activity, with Zoomex launching a prediction and rewards campaign tied to the 2026 tournament. Users can forecast match outcomes, group-stage results and the eventual champion while competing for USDT, vouchers and World Cup ticket packages through volume-based trading tasks. The push reflects a broader shift: combined monthly volume on Kalshi and Polymarket climbed from under $5 billion in September 2025 to roughly $24 billion by April 2026, with sports driving 80% of Kalshi’s activity. The expanded 48-team format gives platforms 104 fixtures to monetize daily engagement around prediction-style products.

Bitget rolled out GetAgent Playbook, a strategy-workflow layer that pushes AI trading beyond conversational prompts toward structured, reusable execution templates. The launch marks the first user-facing deployment of Agent Harness, the framework coordinating market analysis, execution logic and risk controls within isolated, user-authorized sub-accounts. Bitget said more than 1 million users have completed AI-powered trades across its tools, generating over $1.2 billion in cumulative volume. Users can browse, preview and configure ready-made strategies before activation, with every action logged and auditable. The move underscores how exchanges are embedding an AI trading bot directly into market infrastructure rather than treating it as a standalone chat assistant.

Thursday’s developments trace a single arc: as Washington formalizes oversight of stablecoins and derivatives, infrastructure players are repositioning around AI, prediction markets and automation while security debt in deprecated contracts lingers. COINOTAG’s aggregate market data frames the backdrop starkly — the Fear & Greed Index sits at 15, deep in bear-market Extreme Fear, Bitcoin dominance holds near 69.9%, and total crypto market capitalization stands around $1.81 trillion. The official rulemaking and CME’s court filing signal a maturing but contested regulatory regime, while on-chain evidence of repeated exploits underscores unresolved risk. Capital is consolidating into Bitcoin even as builders chase the next computing and trading frontier across the broader altcoin market.