In the news this week: A consumer group filed a complaint against Starbucks over its mobile app and reloadable gift cards, Apple Pay added a new payment tech firm, The Clearing House hired Amanda Stewart as its new marketing chief, and more.

The use of digital wallets to finance the Hamas attack on Israel highlights the need for tighter controls on the transfer of cryptocurrencies.

When you centralize a blockchain, you lose much of its inherent value. Acting Comptroller Michael Hsu's support for centralized tokenization betrays a misunderstanding of the value of decentralization.

Germany, traditionally a cash-heavy economy, is seeing a rise in debit card use. Meanwhile, Indian regulators accuse several crypto exchanges of violating anti-money-laundering rules.

Before a spot bitcoin ETF is approved, we're going to need to see much more clarity about how applicants draw the line between custody and trading.

India softens stance on payment regs; a Dutch neobank turns to gen AI; and more.

Grayscale Investments, the cryptocurrency-trust manager vying for U.S. approval to convert the world's biggest bitcoin trust into an exchange-traded fund, says Silbert has resigned as its chairman. He heads a related company that is the subject of lawsuits by U.S. regulators.

The crypto landscape is poised for significant developments in 2024, including a focus on tokenization, legislative uncertainties, a regulatory tug-of-war between the SEC and CFTC, and a potentially bullish year for Bitcoin.

The five banks that went under in 2023 had nearly $550 billion of assets, the largest total in a single year. Here's a look back at how they unraveled.

CaixaBank assembled a team of more than 100 people focused on generative artificial intelligence products, Ripple changed the name of RippleNet to Ripple Payments, and more.

Several factors are combining that make it more likely bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will become mainstream assets in 2024.

Block is offering a new hardware Bitcoin wallet as crypto advocate Jack Dorsey focuses the payments company formerly known as Square more on security and self-governance for the digital-asset sector.

Leaders of the Dallas-based crypto services platform BankSocial hope to further decentralized finance concepts throughout the industry by using distributed ledger technology to support the proposed Defy Federal Credit Union's offerings of a deposit account and cryptocurrency services.

Canada's government has finalized arrangements with Visa and Mastercard to cap credit card interchange for small businesses; Klarna is expanding its work with the Dutch payment processor Adyen; and more.

In reality, central bank digital currencies would provide only some of the benefits of a real cryptocurrency and would have numerous drawbacks.

Michael Lewis takes a more sympathetic approach than many other observers to the former CEO of the crypto exchange FTX in his latest book, "Going Infinite."

In a settlement with the Department of Justice, Treasury and market regulators, crypto exchange Binance agreed to pay more than $4 billion in fines and for CEO Changpeng Zhao to resign in a sprawling settlement of anti-money laundering and sanctions violations.

A Lloyds Bank study finds that the number of crytpo scams rose by 23% year-over-year in October. Separately, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia is using artificial intelligence to detect abusive language in transaction messaging.

A filing for a BlackRock fund based on the cryptocurrency XRP showed up on the official Delaware website that registers investment trusts incorporated in the state. The only problem is that BlackRock wasn't the one who submitted it.

UBS joined rivals such as HSBC in allowing clients in Hong Kong to trade some crypto-linked exchange-traded funds amid a push by the city to foster a digital-asset hub.