🇺🇸“We’re not the securities and everything commission anymore” The SEC has issued an interpretation that clarifies the application of federal securities laws to digital assets using definitions in the GENIUS Act. The document clarifies bitcoin and other digital assets as a commodity. Going forward, only securities that have been tokenized will fall under the SEC's authority, says SEC Chair Paul Atkins. The interpretation ends a long dispute over the SEC's jurisdiction over digital assets which potentially could have led to the classification of digital asset developers as securities brokers with grave implications for user privacy. The interpretation appears to additionally advance clarity on proposals in market structure drafts, which insufficiently defined what digital assets could be subject to broker/dealer registration requirements. The interpretation is a major win for privacy, as broker/dealers are required to implement KYC/AML programs by law. Find the full interpretation here: https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/interp/2026/33-11412.pdf

🔴Ethics disclosures reveal Tornado Cash top-prosecutor's ties to Epstein network Ethics disclosures show SDNY top prosecutor Jay Clayton holds up to $6M in Epstein affiliated Apollo Management, along with stock in JP Morgan and Bank of America, according to a new investigation by The Lever. Earlier this week, Clayton announced that SDNY will retry Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm on sanctions evasion and money laundering conspiracy charges. At the same time, citizens are demanding money laundering investigations into JPM and BoA over the potential enablement of Epstein's sex trafficking operation, which was in part financed by Apollo Management founder Leon Black, according to a $62M settlement agreement between Black and the US Virgin Islands. From 2021 to 2025, Clayton served as chair of the board and independent director at Apollo Management, a private equity firm founded by Black, who has been identified as one of Epstein's top financiers and closest associates. Clayton was appointed to the role at Apollo following Black's resignation over his ties to Epstein, with many describing Clayton's job as a 'clean up.'

🔴The Luxembourg government is allowing a state bank to act against the International Criminal Court, the Luxembourg Times reports. The incident is yet another example of the US extrajudicial weaponization of the global financial system against dissent. Since 2025, the Trump administration has placed sanctions on eleven ICC judges and prosecutors who led the effort of obtaining an arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. While no sanctions have been placed on the ICC directly, the Luxembourg Spuerkeess decided to close two accounts held by the ICC to avoid potential regulatory repercussions. The sanctions are not enacted via Congressional approval but by executive order of the US president, prohibiting any US service to do business with sanctioned ICC personnel, directly limiting the ICC's operations through the cancelation of necessary services, such as email and accounting software. While the US officially holds no authority over international banks, its position as an economic superpower can effectively lead to the exclusion from global financial markets if its orders are not followed suit. The US was originally a signatory to the Rome Statute which established the ICC in 1998 under Bill Clinton, though the signature was never ratified. In 2002, the US formally "unsigned" the treaty under President Bush and established the American Service-Members' Protection Act, more commonly known as The Hague Invasion Act, which prevents US agencies from granting assistance to the ICC, and gives the US president all necessary mans to prevent the prosecution of US citizens by the ICC – including military action.

🔴An FBI Field Interview conducted as part of a federal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein details how a Deutsche Bank compliance officer was terminated after raising flags over cryptocurrency activity conducted by a firm owned by Jared Kushner in 2016. In total, the compliance officer identified over 100 Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) who appeared to be insufficiently monitored by Deutsche Bank, detailing how she was pressured to keep accounts open – including the accounts of Epstein, after finding he had been making payments to young women. The document gives a rare glimpse into the world of so-called relationship managing, in which wealthy individuals are treated favorably by financial institutions even when flags are raised. While regular banking customers fall victim to overly-cautious account closures, the FBI report details how individuals with more substantive financial resources are continuously cut slack in anti-money laundering procedures in order to retain their business. [EFTA00128988

🔴The Trump administration appears to be illegally leveraging tax authorities to obtain the home addresses of immigrants, according to the Washington Post. A federal judge has found that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) violated federal law “approximately 42,695 times” when it shared confidential taxpayer addresses with immigration enforcement officials last summer, as WaPo reports. By federal law, the IRS may only provide the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with tax records if the agency first identifies a person's address correctly. Instead, the DHS appears to have used the information sharing agreement to obtain addresses from the IRS, with address fields left blank or filled out incompletely. The incident marks yet another escalation in the use of financial infrastructure to achieve political ends. DHS officials have defended the data-sharing agreement as necessary to crack down on illegal immigration. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/02/26/irs-data-federal-judge-dhs-illegal/

🔴The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has published a new report on cyber-enabled fraud, deeming peer-to-peer transactions and decentralized finance "money laundering infrastructure". Notably, the report offers no statistics to support such claims, and rather relies on anecdotal evidence that the increased use of virtual assets contributes to an increase in cybercrime related fraud. The FATF calls for greater payment transparency and the application of AI/Machine Learning for the tracing of funds, as well as for the implementation of FATF guidance for virtual assets, which could go as far as subjecting front-end developers and non-custodial wallets to anti-money laundering regulations.

🔴Senator Tom Cotton, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has reposted a letter penned in October calling for the expansion of the PATRIOT Act and the Bank Secrecy Act to "prevent illegal aliens from opening accounts at US financial institutions." The PATRIOT Act formalized KYC procedures for financial institutions in 2001. Since then, no statistics have been released to confirm that KYC measures are in any way useful to stop financial crime, yet Congress continues to lobby for their expansion. The measures verifiably lead to skyrocketing compliance costs that are rolled onto consumers, which has emerged as a leading cause for un- and underbanked citizens.

🔴The Trump administration is considering an Executive Order that would require banks to collect citizenship information on customers, per the Wall Street Journal. As such, the proposed Executive Order would deputize banks to function as defacto policing agencies to crack down on illegal immigration. The Treasury is already pressuring banks to identify illegal immigrants and considering the potential re-underwriting of customers, as stated by Secretary Scott Bessent earlier this month.

🚨NEW: HOW AN INTERNATIONAL TAX ENFORCEMENT GROUP DESPERATELY TRIES TO SELL YOU MORE SURVEILLANCE The J5 says cryptocurrency services pose a systemic risk to the financial system – by drastically misrepresenting what suspicious activity reports (SARs) actually do. According to the reports, OTC desks and cryptocurrency service providers have seen a sharp increase in SARs filings since 2015, so even more surveillance is needed to root out the potential use of cryptocurrency for tax evasion, money laundering, and terrorist financing. What the reports omit is that SARs in no way indicate crime. In fact, the vast, vast majority of reports filed with regulators are of innocent people and innocuous transactions. US financial institutions file upward of 30 million reports on customers every year, and for those efforts, government agencies have fewer than 400 criminal investigations to show for. That is trillions of dollars of transactions surveilled, and millions of reports filed, resulting in only a few hundred criminal investigations. The problem, apparently, is not that the overbearing system fails, but that not everyone is inside it… yet. 🔗 Full story: https://www.therage.co/tax-crypto-risk/