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The deadline is here: On May 18, unregistered Dutch crypto firms could face penalties if they do not fall into line with the Netherlands’ new anti-money laundering (AML) laws, passed by the Dutch Upper House on April 21.

According to the Anti-Money Laundering Directive, companies offering crypto-to-fiat or custodial services should have registered by today. In contrast, those offering only crypto-to-crypto services are exempt.

The Dutch Bank (DNB), the body in charge of regulating financial activities in the Netherlands, will be obliged to comply with the mandates of the Dutch government. However, they will not issue licenses for crypto businesses. Instead, paid registration will be mandatory and cost up to €34,000 per year.




U.S. berry producer California Giant Berry Farms joined the blockchain-based food tracking solution IBM Food Trust.

Fruit and vegetable news outlet The Packer reported on May 17 that California Giant will use a blockchain to share data between all the points of its supply chain. The firm employs Glassbit’s Glasschain IBM Food Trust integration compliance as a service solution. According to California Giant’s senior director of operations Thomas Taggart, the integration with IBM’s blockchain network will allow the firm and its partners to find ways to improve the efficiency of product transportation. According to company data website Owler, California Giant has an estimated annual revenue of $62.6 million and employs 103 people.




Japanese cryptocurrency exchange bitbank has begun implementing changes to make it compliant with the country’s revised Payment Services Act (PSA), effective May 1.

Atsushi Kuwabara from bitbank spoke to Cointelegraph on how local exchanges and regulatory bodies would be responding to modifications of cryptocurrency-related laws first proposed by the Japanese House of Representatives in 2019. Under the modifications to the PSA, all references to “virtual currency” must be replaced with the term “crypto asset”. The Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Agency (JVCEA), has changed its name to the Japan Crypto Asset Exchange Agency, though it will still be referred to as the JVCEA.

Under the new PSA, Japanese Cabinet Ordinance and financial watchdog Financial Services Agency (FSA) guidelines, any user who sends crypto assets to an exchange has a “prioritized right of return” for any assets.


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A new bill before Congress asks regulators to put together a massive survey on the state of blockchain adoption and rank the U.S.’s adoption relative to other nations.

On May 19, Representative Brett Guthrie (R-KY) introduced the “Advancing Blockchain Act.” Per a May 18 draft of the legislation obtained by Cointelegraph, the bill asks the Federal Trade Commission and the Secretary of Commerce to put together a new survey of blockchain’s uses and the state of adoption in the United States. The current text of the bill also seems to focus on uses of blockchain in interstate commerce, potentially including, for example, supply chain management. Given Guthrie’s role on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, it’s possible that blockchain’s use cases in the energy sector appeal to him as well.




Shopify sellers can now accept crypto via digital asset payment processor, CoinPayments.

A partnership with crypto payment processor CoinPayments means bolstered digital asset payment compatibility for Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify. Shopify sellers can now harness CoinPayments' digital asset payment processing platform, paving the way for sellers to accept 1,800 different cryptocurrencies as payment, a May 20 statement detailed. Shopify touted cryptocurrency payment compatibility prior to the CoinPayments partnership, via Coinbase Commerce, BitPay and GoCoin, although CoinPayments adds to the offering.




Chinese authorities have busted a group of scammers allegedly claiming to be “Huobi officials”.

Chinese authorities have dismantled a group of alleged scammers posing as Huobi exchange officials, who were operating an over-the-counter (OTC) website. As reported by local media outlet Jinse, on May 20 police arrested 12 suspects in Guangdong province believed to be behind the scheme, after an investigation found that WeChat crypto trading groups had been infiltrated from November 2019. Scammers persuaded victims to invest in the fake OTC platform, which was used for money laundering, and then sent the defrauded money to overseas accounts.


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Goldman Sachs will host a conference call on May 27 titled US Economic Outlook & Implications of Current Policies for Inflation, Gold, and Bitcoin.

On May 23, Mike Dundas, the founder of crypto media outlet The Block, posted a screenshot of the invitation for the call, revealing that the event will be hosted by Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, the CIO of Goldman’s Investment Strategy Group, alongside Harvard economics professor Jason Furman, and Goldman Sachs’ chief economist Jan Hatzius.




National People’s Congress, China’s parliament and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the most powerful political advisory body in the country, have recently begun their annual sessions. These are widely referred to as the "Two Sessions" or "lianghui" meetings. These meetings have been ongoing since May 22.

The National People’s Congress, or NPC, is China's top legislative body. Nearly 3,000 delegates from around the country meet once a year to submit proposals during the meetings. According to a Beijing News’ report on May 23, Jieqing Tan, deputy to the NPC, suggested setting up a special fund for blockchain industry development. If accepted, this fund would be led by the government. The aim of the fund is to support the development and growth of a number of promising blockchain enterprises, encourage blockchain technology innovation, and cultivate a number of unicorn enterprises in the blockchain space, says Tan.




Virtual reality media platform, Sensorium, has announced its membership in the Global Blockchain Business Council, or GBBC — a Swiss-based non-profit industry association for blockchain.

Sensorium will participate in GBBC’s upcoming virtual forum on May 28, which will see the firm’s director of technology Alex Blagirev discuss his predictions for how virtual social media will change the way that people interact online. Cointelegraph spoke to GBBC to discuss the intersection between social media and virtual reality, or VR, and the role that blockchain plays in the sector’s future.


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Bitcoin price is struggling to reclaim $9,000, leading investor sentiment to turn bearish on BTC’s short-term price action.

Bitcoin (BTC) price had a relatively muted day as the digital asset traded between $8,700-$8,885. Currently, the price remains below the ascending channel trendline and the daily candle closed as a neutral doji, showing bulls and bears are in contention on the direction Bitcoin will take over the short-term. As the price searches for direction and its dominance rate drops from 67% to 65.5%, a handful of altcoins continued a multi-day streak of impressive double digit rallies.




The average Bitcoin fee has fallen by nearly 54% over the last five days, but some believe network congestion could push users to altcoins.

After spiking a week ago to levels last seen in February 2018, the average Bitcoin (BTC) transaction fee has fallen by more than half. BitInfoCharts data shows that Bitcoin’s average fee decreased by nearly 54% from $6.65 on May 20 to $3.07 on May 25. The median — or most common — fee peaked at $3.91, but has now fallen to $1.65.




The Global Blockchain Business Council believes the pandemic has shone a light on many systemic inefficiencies that blockchain technology can solve.

The Swiss-based non-profit blockchain industry association, the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC), believes that the crises resulting from the coronavirus pandemic have highlighted the benefits of distributed ledger technology (DLT). In email correspondence with Cointelegraph, a representative of the GBBC asserted that DLT can modernize and address the inefficiencies of the systems that underpin the organization of contemporary societies. With this in mind, the GBBC is working to foment dialogue among key policymakers and business leaders on how DLT can “address certain inefficiencies, and in some cases fundamentally shift frameworks and systems in hopes of creating more secure, equitable, and functional societies.” The GBBC will devote significant resources to engaging lawmakers over the coming years.


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In a recent response to a Right to Information query, the Reserve Bank of India, the Indian central bank, has stated that there is no prohibition on banks to provide bank accounts to cryptocurrency traders.

But some banks have been arbitrarily denying services to crypto users and are still doing so. The RBI banking ban on crypto was set aside by the Supreme Court on March 4, 2020. In its detailed judgement of over 180 pages, the Supreme Court stated that the RBI action is extremely disproportionate in severing the lifeline (banking services) for cryptocurrency trading business despite crypto trading not being illegal under any Indian law and no harm or damage is proved to have been caused to these banks as a result of their relationship with crypto exchanges.




The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, or FINMA, has authorized InCore bank to carry out digital assets transactions, allowing customers worldwide to access and transact within the bank.

The official announcement represents an important step in creating a blockchain-friendly environment across the EU banking sector. InCore bank becomes the first Swiss business-to-business bank approved to operate within the crypto sphere. The firm now allows the institutional clients to trade, hold, and transfer digital assets. FINMA has also allowed the bank to develop its tokenization capabilities.




Chase Bank NA, the sixth-largest bank worldwide and a subsidiary of banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co, will pay approximately $2.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging that it overcharged customers for buying cryptocurrency using its credit cards.

The sum was reported by Reuters following a court filing on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court. JPMorgan Chase admits no wrongdoing in the settlement, and customers who are part of the class will receive approximately 95% of the previously-paid fees back. The lawsuit alleged that Chase Bank customers who used their credit card to purchase cryptocurrency were improperly charged pricey “cash advance” fees. The suit originally asked for $1 million for affected customers, but the final settlement is significantly larger.


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The Norwegian-based producer of farmed-salmon, Kvarøy Arctic, has become the latest firm to join IBM’s Food Trust — the tech giant’s blockchain-based supply chain solution for the food industry.

Kvarøy Arctic is a supplier for numerous restaurants and Whole Foods retailers in the United States and Canada, and will now utilize blockchain technology to provide detailed information on the origin of its produce to restaurants and consumers. Information regarding the origin of salmon farmed by Kvarøy Arctic will be accessible to corporate buyers and consumers through QR codes. Customers will be able to access comprehensive information and images detailing the conditions under which the salmon was produced, including the population and density of the habitats in which the salmon were raised, their age, date of harvest, and information concerning the supply route taken from farm to supermarket. The salmon producer is also working with its feed supplier BioMar to also provide its supply chain data to the project.





Ripple’s Xpring initiative has invested at least $500 million in various projects since it was launched in 2018.

The Block’s John Dantoni tracked Xpring’s investments and found that the initiative has contributed to at least 27 projects to date, including Compound, Dharma, Securitize, Bitso and Forte.

Xpring invested $100 million in Forte last year - a blockchain-based gaming platform, which leverages Xpring's open-source Interledger Protocol with XRP serving as a base pair settlement. Many of Xpring’s investments are related to Ripple’s core business model, centered around XRP and payments development, as Dantoni noted. Last year, Xpring made at least 18 investments. This year, the initiative has been quiet, with only two investments so far - in crypto ATM provider Coinme and blockchain platform for decentralized applications NEAR Protocol.




The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency – which regulates banks in the U.S. – is seeking feedback from the public on the digital activities of national banks and federal savings associations, which includes actions related to cryptocurrencies and digital assets.

The OCC published two notices on Thursday, a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which cover a range of topics related to its remit as a regulator of U.S. banks. It's the second of two notices that focuses on digital activities and hones in on the topic of crypto.

The OCC has set a deadline of August 3 for the receipt of public comments. The OCC is currently led by Brian Brooks, a former chief legal officer for crypto exchange Coinbase, on an interim basis.


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