Regulation Explained

Crypto regulation news mixes four very different things: laws that have been enacted, final rules that regulators have adopted under those laws, proposals that may never take effect, and staff statements that bind nobody. Readers need to know which is which before deciding whether anything changes for their own account. Every guide in this pillar keeps those categories visibly separate and quotes the operative text, with the public law, regulation or official journal reference and a check date.

The guides start from the rules a reader is most likely to run into directly. The travel rule explains why an exchange asks who owns the wallet you are withdrawing to, comparing the rules FinCEN, the European Union, Canada and the United Kingdom apply, from dollar thresholds to the EU's choice of none at all. The GENIUS Act guide reads the 2025 federal stablecoin statute section by section, the SEC and CFTC guide maps which US agency covers which activity today, and a separate page reads the SEC's 2026 crypto interpretation and staff statements document by document. The exchange bankruptcy guide explains what customer terms, court rulings and the lack of FDIC or SIPC cover meant for depositors when platforms failed. The MiCA guide explains how the European regime treats stablecoin issuers and why liquidity has split between compliant and non-compliant tokens on EU venues.

Regulation is jurisdiction-specific and changes often, so each page says which country it covers and when the text was last checked. Nothing here is legal advice. Where a rule is still a proposal, the page says so and does not treat a likely outcome as settled.