Weekly Blockchain Monitor – March 16, 2026

By Robert A. Musiala Jr., Om M. Kakani & Amos Kim on March 16, 2026

In this issue:

Financial Institutions and Crypto Payments Companies Launch Products, Collaborations
US Stock Exchanges Announce Initiatives with Crypto Exchanges
Treasury Issues Report on Innovative Technologies To Combat Illicit Crypto Activities
Federal Banking Regulators Address Tokenized Securities, Stablecoins
DOJ Continues Crypto Enforcement Actions
Report Provides Data on Crypto Illicit Activity in 2025

Financial Institutions and Crypto Payments Companies Launch Products, Collaborations

A major U.S. financial institution that operates one of the world’s largest card payment networks recently announced its Crypto Partner Program, which it described as “a new global initiative that brings together more than 85 crypto‑native companies, payments providers, and financial institutions to create a forum for meaningful dialogue and collaboration as this space continues to mature.” According to a press release, program participants will engage with the company “on the design and direction of future products and services, including solutions that aim to bring the speed and programmability that digital assets offer together with established card rails and global commerce flows.” The press release includes a long list of well-known crypto industry firms that will make up the initial set of program partners.

Another recent press release announced that Strike, a crypto payments company, has been granted a BitLicense and a Money Transmitter License by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). The licenses allow Strike to offer its products and services to individuals and businesses in the state of New York.

In stablecoin news, a major European bank recently announced the launch of its euro-backed stablecoin on the Stellar network. According to a press release, the bank selected the Stellar network based on its high scalability, transaction speed, low transaction costs and asset tokenization support. Separately, a major global insurance company recently announced “the first known stablecoin insurance premium payment among major global brokers … through a successful proof of concept using trusted U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins.”

For more information, please refer to the following links:

US Stock Exchanges Announce Initiatives with Crypto Exchanges

By Robert A. Musiala Jr.

The operator of a major U.S. national stock exchange recently announced “a strategic relationship and investment in OKX, a blockchain technology and trading company serving more than 120 million people globally.” According to a press release, the company “will have a board seat on OKX’s Board of Directors and establish a broad strategic collaboration to leverage OKX’s proven blockchain infrastructure and global reach alongside [the company’s] world-class market technology, regulatory frameworks, and institutional community.”

In a related development, Kraken, a major U.S. crypto exchange, recently announced a partnership with a different U.S. national stock exchange “to build an equities transformation gateway that connects tokenized equity capital markets with decentralized blockchain networks, combining [the stock exchange’s] regulated market infrastructure with Kraken’s xStocks framework to enable tokenized equities to move fluidly between permissioned institutional markets and permissionless DeFi ecosystems.” According to a Kraken blog post, “The initiative will build on the growing adoption of xStocks, which provide tokenized exposure to publicly traded equities across blockchain ecosystems.”

And in the European Union, a major European bank recently announced that it has “issued a tokenised share class of an existing French-domiciled money market fund, marking a new step in its exploration of fund tokenisation using public blockchain infrastructure.” According to the press release, “The tokenised shares are issued under a permissioned access model, whereby holdings and transfers are restricted to eligible and authorised participants, in line with applicable regulatory requirements.”

For more information, please refer to the following links:

Treasury Issues Report on Innovative Technologies To Combat Illicit Crypto Activities

By Om M. Kakani

The U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) recently released its March 2026 report to Congress, titled “Innovative Technologies to Counter Illicit Finance Involving Digital Assets,” fulfilling a requirement of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act. The report analyzes how innovative technologies are being used – or could be used – to counter illicit finance involving digital assets, and it outlines risk assessments, technological applications, regulatory gaps and recommended legislative actions.

The report identifies several ongoing illicit finance risks associated with digital assets, including money laundering, sanctions evasion, ransomware, online fraud and cyber‑enabled theft. The report places particular emphasis on the vulnerabilities found in mixers, tumblers, decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, self‑hosted wallets and jurisdictional arbitrage, all of which are frequently exploited by criminal networks.

The report acknowledges that crypto mixers can serve legitimate privacy purposes, such as shielding sensitive business payments or personal wealth on public blockchains. However, it also distinguishes between custodial and noncustodial mixers, noting that noncustodial mixers pose significantly higher anti-money laundering (AML) risk due to lack of identifiable intermediaries. The report notes that criminal groups – including North Korea‑linked cyber actors responsible for major thefts – have used such services to break tracing links before moving funds across bridges or into stablecoins.

The report outlines how regulated financial institutions are deploying tools such as artificial intelligence, digital identity systems, blockchain analytics and application programming interfaces to detect suspicious activity, noting both benefits and implementation challenges. The report highlights these tools as increasingly necessary to monitor high‑volume blockchain transactions, flag illicit patterns and satisfy AML obligations. The report describes digital identity mechanisms that support customer verification and fraud prevention and notes blockchain analytics and other monitoring methods for their ability to trace transactions and support sanctions enforcement. However, the report notes that financial institutions have reported operational challenges and unclear regulatory expectations when adopting such technologies.

The report concludes that existing AML/countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) rules do not adequately address digital asset activity, particularly in DeFi ecosystems. To address this gap, the report proposes a series of legislative recommendations, including:

Define which DeFi actors or entities should be subject to AML/CFT obligations based on their roles and associated risks.
Consider creating digital‑asset‑specific financial institution categories under the Bank Secrecy Act and updating existing regulatory definitions to reflect new business models.
Provide Treasury with authority to restrict or condition certain cross‑border “transmittals of funds” not currently covered by correspondent banking rules.
Create a digital‑asset‑specific “hold law” to give exchanges and platforms legal authority to temporarily freeze suspicious funds during investigations – filling a current legal gap where institutions detect illicit activity but lack clear authority to intervene before the assets move.

For more information, please refer to the following links:

Federal Banking Regulators Address Tokenized Securities, Stablecoins

By Robert A. Musiala Jr.

The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), along with other federal bank regulators, recently published a FAQ with “answers to frequently asked questions to clarify the capital treatment of tokenized securities.” According to an OCC press release, “The answers to the frequently asked questions clarify that an eligible tokenized security should generally receive the same capital treatment as the non-tokenized form of the security under the capital rule.”

Separately, in a recent speech, the chairman of the U.S. agency that provides bank deposit insurance addressed stablecoins and the GENIUS Act. In the speech, the chairman said the agency “is planning to propose that payment stablecoins subject to the GENIUS Act are not eligible for [deposit] pass-through insurance.” Pass-through insurance allows deposits placed at a bank by a third party on behalf of a depositor to be insured as if deposited directly by the end customer. According to the chairman’s remarks, “The GENIUS Act makes clear that payment stablecoins are not ‘subject to deposit insurance’ or guaranteed by the U.S. government.”

For more information, please refer to the following links:

DOJ Continues Crypto Enforcement Actions

By Robert A. Musiala Jr.

According to recent reports, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently arrested the 25-year-old son of an employee at a U.S. federal contractor. The 25-year-old allegedly stole more than $46 million in cryptocurrency from seizure wallets managed by the U.S. Marshals Service. He was reportedly arrested on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin.

In another action, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a civil forfeiture action to recover $3.4 million in cryptocurrency related to an online investment fraud scheme. According to a DOJ press release, the scammers “convinced the victims to invest in an exclusive Ethereum (ETH) investment opportunity that the unknown subjects claimed was backed by physical gold.”

For more information, please refer to the following links:

Report Provides Data on Crypto Illicit Activity in 2025

By Amos Kim

Chainalysis recently released its 2026 “Crypto Crime Report,” which examines illicit cryptocurrency activity in 2025. According to the report, crypto crime reached a record high in 2025, driven primarily by a sharp rise in activity involving sanctioned entities and set against a broader increase in on-chain nation-state activity. The report identifies four key trends that defined crypto crime in 2025: (1) nation-state threats drove record volumes – including more than $2 billion stolen by Democratic People’s Republic of Korea-linked hackers – the use of Russia’s ruble-backed A7A5 token in large-scale sanctions evasion and continued on-chain activity by Iran’s proxy networks; (2) Chinese money laundering networks emerged as a dominant force in the illicit on-chain ecosystem, offering laundering-as-a-service and other criminal infrastructure supporting scams, North Korean hack proceeds, sanctions evasion and terrorist financing; (3) full-stack illicit infrastructure providers played an increasingly central role, including domain registrars, bulletproof hosting services and other technical infrastructure used to support malicious cyber activity by both illicit actors and nation-states; and (4) the intersection of cryptocurrency and violent crime continued to expand, including greater use of crypto in human trafficking operations and a rise in physical coercion attacks in which victims were forced to transfer assets. Other key findings from the report include the following:

Illicit cryptocurrency addresses received at least $154 billion in 2025, representing a 162 percent increase year over year.
The year‑over‑year increase was driven primarily by a 694 percent increase in value received by sanctioned entities.
Even if sanctions‑related activity were excluded, 2025 would still represent a record year for crypto crime, as activity increased across most illicit categories.
The estimated illicit share of total attributed cryptocurrency transaction volume remained below 1 percent, despite increasing slightly from 2024.
Stablecoins accounted for approximately 84 percent of all illicit transaction volume.

For more information, please refer to the following link:

The 2026 Crypto Crime Report