suspension

According to CoinDesk, the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of South Korea has fined the cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb 36.8 billion won (approximately 24.6 million USD) for violating anti-money laundering regulations and has ordered a partial business suspension for six months.According to the Financial Services Commission, this penalty is based on the Act on Reporting and Using Specific Financial Transaction Information, stemming from approximately 6.65 million violations by Bithumb, of which about 3.55 million involved failure to fulfill customer identity verification (KYC) obligations, and about 3.04 million involved failure to effectively intercept transactions that should have been restricted.Regulators also imposed penalties on responsible individuals: the CEO of Bithumb received a warning, and the head of compliance reporting was suspended for six months.The aforementioned violations arose from on-site inspections conducted by South Korean regulatory authorities on the five major exchanges: Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax, between 2024 and 2025.

According to News1, the South Korean FIU has preemptively notified of a "6-month partial suspension" and accountability for the person in charge due to Bithumb's suspected violations of the Special Financial Transactions Information Act, trading with unreported overseas virtual asset service providers, and lax KYC reviews.The restrictions mainly target the withdrawal of virtual assets for new users, while existing users' deposits and withdrawals of Korean won and cryptocurrency, as well as trading, are currently unaffected.

The Solana ecosystem project SOON announced on the X platform that its soonBase L3 network will officially shut down on March 26. The team stated that as the SOON ecosystem develops, resources will be focused on advancing the AI capital market and related AI-driven products and infrastructure. The SOON mainnet and svmBNB network will not be affected and will remain fully operational.All users must withdraw their assets on soonBase L3 using the official bridging tool before March 26. After the shutdown, any remaining assets will be transferred to a contract controlled by the team on Base for safekeeping, and subsequent withdrawals will need to be handled manually by the team.

According to market news, due to the conflict in the Middle East, most air traffic in and out of Dubai has been disrupted, severely affecting the flow of gold and silver globally.Traders indicate that this could trigger further volatility in metal prices, which have already been significantly fluctuating this year. Dubai is a key hub for precious metal transportation, accounting for about 20% of the global gold flow last year. Traders and analysts point out that if the transportation of gold and silver goods is hindered for an extended period, it may drive up regional prices in the Asian market.John Reade, senior market strategist at the World Gold Council, stated, "With flights in the Middle East suspended, the availability of gold has become a concerning issue." A gold trader mentioned, "Currently, no goods are moving by air." Typically, gold is transported as cargo on passenger planes, with a single flight capable of carrying up to 5 tons, valued at approximately $830 million at current prices.

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen issued an internal letter stating, "We are closely monitoring the current security situation in the Middle East and understand that everyone may feel anxious and concerned at this moment. We have activated our emergency mechanism and will accompany and support every colleague during this special period.Please temporarily set aside concerns about work and income, and prioritize the safety of yourself and your family; salaries will be fully paid, unaffected by work stoppages or remote work; all expenses incurred for safety reasons will be fully covered by the company, including but not limited to: temporary accommodation, transportation, emergency supplies, and medical expenses. If evacuation is necessary, the company will cover all airfare and transportation costs."

According to a report by Hong Kong media Orange News, the President of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Professionals Association, Chen Zhi-hua, disclosed that the Hong Kong virtual asset industry is facing a sudden "compliance storm." Practitioners in related businesses have reported encountering bewildering regulatory requirements during the application process for virtual asset-related business qualifications. The existing written policy requires an additional 5 hours of Continuing Professional Training (CPT).However, the latest requirements were not issued through formal written documents or public guidelines, but were communicated "quietly" to license upgrade applicants in the form of verbal notifications or individual emails, stating that all responsible officers (RO) for relevant license upgrades, including those who have already obtained upgrade qualifications, must pass a virtual asset regulation exam conducted by a designated single institution. This nearly "invisible" directive undermines the transparency and fairness that regulatory agencies should uphold.Chen Zhi-hua suggested maintaining the original requirement of an additional 5 hours of Continuing Professional Training (CPT) and urged regulatory agencies to immediately suspend the enforcement of exam requirements through invisible policies.

The multi-chain lending protocol ZeroLend has officially announced:After three years of building and operating the protocol, the team has made the difficult decision to gradually cease operations. Despite the team's ongoing efforts, the current form of the protocol is no longer sustainable.In recent times, several chains that ZeroLend initially supported have become inactive or experienced a significant decline in liquidity. In some cases, oracle providers have also stopped their support, making it increasingly difficult to reliably operate the market or generate sustainable income. Meanwhile, as the scale of the protocol expanded, it attracted more malicious actors, including hackers and scammers. Combined with the inherently low-profit and high-risk nature of lending protocols, this has led to the protocol being in a state of long-term losses.The team's current top priority is to ensure that users can safely withdraw their assets. All users are strongly advised to withdraw any remaining funds from the platform as soon as possible.

The Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Paul Atkins, was questioned by Democratic lawmakers during a House Financial Services Committee oversight hearing regarding the suspension of enforcement actions against Tron Foundation founder Justin Sun.Senior Democratic lawmaker Maxine Waters emphasized that the SEC has abandoned nearly all previous cryptocurrency enforcement cases since Trump took office and questioned whether Sun's relationship with Trump influenced this. Atkins stated that he could not discuss individual cases but was willing to provide confidential briefings within the limits of the rules. At the same time, Atkins confirmed that the SEC is working with the CFTC to develop cryptocurrency regulatory rules consistent with the Clarity Act to clarify the jurisdiction of the two agencies.

According to Newspim, Lee Chan-jin, the head of the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) of South Korea, stated that the "Bitcoin misdelivery incident" at Bithumb is a serious event that undermines the credibility of cryptocurrency exchanges. He pointed out that Bithumb actually holds only about 42,000 bitcoins, and this misdelivery exposed the severe risks of "bookkeeping transactions" trading fictitious assets without security guarantees.He emphasized that if the investigation confirms illegal negligence, the highest level of sanctions will be imposed, including fines and business suspensions. He also suggested adding provisions for revocable or restricted access licenses in the future "Basic Law on Digital Assets" to strengthen the regulation of internal controls at exchanges.The incident occurred on February 6, when Bithumb mistakenly distributed 2,000 bitcoins to each of 249 customers as rewards (originally intended to be 2,000 Korean won), totaling 620,000 bitcoins, which was valued at approximately 61 trillion won (about 45 billion USD) at the time. Bithumb intercepted the transactions within 20 minutes, but 125 bitcoins were still sold.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced on the X platform that due to funding expiration and the partial shutdown of the U.S. government, the SEC is currently operating according to the agency's plan during the shutdown. Starting from January 31, 2026, until further notice, only a very small number of staff will continue to work.

The South Korean financial authorities are studying the introduction of a "payment suspension" system in cases of virtual asset price manipulation to prevent suspects from transferring or hiding illicit gains during the investigation phase.According to reports, the Financial Services Commission of South Korea proposed during a regular meeting last November to consider practices in the capital market regarding stock price manipulation, taking preemptive freezing measures on accounts suspected of manipulating virtual asset prices to restrict withdrawals, transfers, and payment outflows. The report pointed out that under the current system, the confiscation or recovery of illicit gains from virtual assets usually requires a prosecutor's investigation and a court warrant, which poses a risk of assets being transferred during this period. Internally, the Financial Services Commission believes that a payment suspension mechanism similar to that in capital market law could be introduced in the proposed "second phase of virtual asset legislation" to more effectively prevent unrealized gains from being disposed of prematurely. Relevant officials from the financial authorities stated that since virtual assets are easier to conceal once transferred to personal wallets, such a system may help strengthen regulation and asset preservation in the early stages.

According to CriptoNoticias, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has decided to suspend its local services in Argentina. The company notified users on December 31, 2025, that it will stop supporting the purchase and sale of the USDC stablecoin using the Argentine peso starting January 31, 2026.Coinbase stated that this move is a "strategic pause" rather than a permanent exit, aimed at reassessing and strengthening its market strategy. During the pause, other cryptocurrency operations (including sending and receiving) will continue to operate normally.

Binance has suspended Ukrainian users from using fiat payment service provider Bifinity UAB for withdrawals via Visa and Mastercard due to changes in regulatory policies. A Binance spokesperson confirmed this news and added that the announcement regarding the change in payment methods only applies to Ukrainian users who have previously used Bifinity services.This change will affect some fiat deposit and withdrawal methods for Ukrainian users, but the functions for depositing, withdrawing, and trading cryptocurrencies will remain unaffected. Users can still use Visa and Mastercard for deposits and purchasing cryptocurrencies, Apple Pay and Google Pay are still available for account top-ups, and Swift transfers continue to support deposits and withdrawals.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin responded on the X platform to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders' proposal to pause the construction of large AI data centers.Vitalik believes that the truly effective approach should be to prepare the capability to "cut 90-99% of computing power" at critical moments in the future, rather than just slowing down immediately; he also supports distinguishing between "super-large clusters" and consumer-grade AI hardware, and advocates for decentralized development.

The cross-chain smart wallet project Blocto announced on social media:"After serving over 2 million users for five years, we are heavy-hearted to announce that the Blocto wallet service will soon be terminated.As one of the earliest ecosystem supporters of Flow, Blocto built the main infrastructure of this ecosystem, including the Blocto wallet, BloctoSwap, Blocto cross-chain bridge, and BloctoBay. We also established the most utilized FLOW staking node. We have partnered with top projects and served millions of users, for which we are immensely proud.However, solely focusing on creating excellent products is not always sustainable. With the price of FLOW dropping from nearly $40 in 2021 to currently below $0.3 (a decline of over 99%), Blocto has been operating at a significant loss. Over the past few years, we have incurred over $5.5 million in losses to maintain community services. But this cannot continue indefinitely. Realizing that our operating funds are about to run out, we began attempting to communicate with the leadership of Flow/Dapper starting in June of this year.After six months of relentless efforts, we have not been able to secure a single meeting with the leadership. Each email exchange takes weeks, while our remaining funds continue to deplete. During these months, we have neither received clear support nor been able to engage in constructive discussions about a sustainable development path. Now, we have no funds left to continue bearing these costs.Effective December 18, 2025, at 7 PM Pacific Standard Time (termination date), the Blocto wallet, BloctoSwap, and Blocto cross-chain bridge will cease operations. The staking service of Blocto's own nodes will not be affected."It is worth noting that Blocto completed a Series A funding round in February 2023 with a valuation of $80 million, with participation from Mark Cuban, IPX, and 500 Global, although the specific amount raised was not disclosed. At that time, Blocto had already supported the Aptos, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Flow, and BNB Chain networks.

According to Bloomberg, trading in futures and options at CME Group was suspended due to a data center failure, affecting markets worth trillions of dollars in contracts, including S&P 500 index futures, U.S. Treasuries, crude oil, gasoline, and palm oil.The forex platform EBS resumed service at 12 PM London time after several hours of downtime. In Singapore, oil traders indicated that CME is a key component of the global market mechanism. Gerald Gan, Deputy Chief Investment Officer at Reed Capital Partners in Singapore, pointed out that the outage is "very frustrating" and noted that the liquidity of alternative platforms may not be as sufficient as that of CME.Amelie Derambure, a portfolio manager at Amundi SA, stated that fortunately, Friday was a light trading day; otherwise, it would have been a "considerable obstacle." The outage occurred the day after Thanksgiving, when U.S. markets had only a half-day of trading.Emmanuel Valavanis, a sales specialist at Forte Securities in London, remarked that having this happen on the last day of month-end and year-end trading, affecting trillions of dollars in trades, is very unfortunate. This outage has surpassed the several-hour downtime incident caused by a technical error in 2019.

MERL surged over 10% in a short time after Bithumb announced the suspension of MERL deposits and withdrawals.

The cryptocurrency concept stock Star Chain (00399.HK) announced before the market opened that it has been ordered by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to suspend trading on November 26, due to the exchange's concerns that the company has failed to meet the requirements for continued listing. The stock plummeted 73%, closing at HKD 0.064 per share, a 91% drop from its peak price at the end of July.The Hong Kong Stock Exchange pointed out that according to Rule 13.24 of the Listing Rules, Star Chain has failed to maintain sufficient operational levels and does not have enough valuable assets to support its operations, which allows its shares to continue to be listed. Therefore, it has required the company to suspend trading starting November 26. Star Chain responded in the announcement that it has decided to apply to the Listing Committee of the exchange for a review.

According to Caixin, cryptocurrency concept stock Star Chain (00399.HK) announced before the market opened on November 17, 2025, that it was ordered by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to suspend trading on November 26, due to the exchange questioning the company's failure to meet the continuing listing requirements. The stock plummeted 73% on November 17, closing at HKD 0.064 per share, a 91% drop from its peak price at the end of July.The Hong Kong Stock Exchange pointed out that according to Rule 13.24 of the Listing Rules, Star Chain has failed to maintain sufficient operational levels and does not have sufficiently valuable assets to support its operations, which allows its shares to continue to maintain listing status. Therefore, it requires the company to suspend trading starting November 26. Star Chain responded in the announcement that it has decided to apply to the Listing Committee of the exchange for a review.