On Friday, the U.S. Treasury’s OFAC blacklisted UK-registered exchanges Zedcex and Zedxion for facilitating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps transactions. The move also put Iranian financier Babak Morteza Zanjani back under sanctions after his 2024 death sentence commutation. Treasury said Americans are prohibited from dealing with the newly sanctioned entities.

According to a Wall Street Journal investigation, Abu Dhabi vehicle Aryam Investment 1, backed by UAE National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, signed a $500 million deal to acquire a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial four days before Donald Trump's January 2025 inauguration. Half the consideration was paid upfront, sending $187 million to Trump family entities and at least $31 million to entities linked to co-founder Steve Witkoff's family, while the arrangement later intersected with U.S. decisions on advanced AI chip sales to the UAE.

The trader known as the "Hyperunit whale" has closed their entire leveraged ether position on Hyperliquid, booking about $250 million in losses and leaving only $53 in the account. The reversal follows an October 2025 haul of roughly $200 million from shorting bitcoin and ether ahead of a tariff announcement, with identity links previously disputed.

On a Friday filing in the Southern District of New York, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission submitted a joint stipulation to dismiss with prejudice its civil case against Gemini Trust Company over the Gemini Earn lending product. The decision follows a full in-kind return of crypto assets to Gemini Earn customers through the Genesis Global Capital bankruptcy between May and June 2024, as well as related regulatory settlements reached by Genesis and Gemini.

Nifty Gateway, Gemini's NFT marketplace, has moved into withdrawal-only mode and will close on February 23, 2026. Users are being asked to remove their artworks and balances ahead of the cutoff. Gemini said the move lets it focus on building a one-stop "super app" while continuing NFT support via Gemini Wallet.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps used UK-registered exchanges Zedcex and Zedxion to move about $1 billion between 2023 and 2025. Most transfers involved Tether's USDT on the Tron network, with IRGC-linked activity making up 56% of their volume. The flows accelerated from $24 million in 2023 to $619 million in 2024, then $410 million in 2025.

Yearn Finance's yETH product was exploited, resulting in approximately $3 million worth of ETH transferred to Tornado Cash. The attacker minted an excessive amount of yETH tokens through a vulnerability, draining liquid staking tokens from the pool in a single transaction. Yearn confirmed the incident affected only the yETH LST stableswap pool, with Yearn Vaults remaining secure.

European digital asset manager CoinShares has withdrawn its U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission registration applications for spot cryptocurrency ETFs covering XRP, Solana, and Litecoin. The company submitted Form RW withdrawal requests on November 28, 2024, as it prepares for a public listing through a $1.2 billion SPAC merger with Nasdaq-listed Vine Hill Capital. CoinShares, which oversees approximately $10 billion in digital assets, cited limited differentiation opportunities in single-asset cryptocurrency ETF offerings given market concentration among major financial institutions including BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale.

China's central bank has reinforced its prohibition on cryptocurrency operations following a Friday meeting with thirteen government agencies. The PBoC highlighted stablecoins as failing to meet anti-money laundering and customer identification standards. The bank characterized these assets as a threat to national financial security.