President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday directing the Federal Reserve to review whether fintech and crypto firms could gain direct access to Fed payment services, commonly known as master accounts. The order also asks the Fed to clarify whether the 12 Reserve Banks can independently approve or deny such access and to deliver a report to the president within 120 days.

More than 100 amendments were submitted ahead of the US Senate Banking Committee's May 14 markup of the CLARITY Act, highlighting disputes over ethics rules, stablecoin yield products and DeFi developer protections. The bill would create a federal crypto framework dividing oversight between the SEC and CFTC, while lawmakers face pressure tied to a target of signing the legislation before July 4, 2026.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on May 19 instructing U.S. financial regulators to review rules that affect fintech firms, digital asset companies, and blockchain-based financial services. Agencies have 90 days to identify barriers tied to partnerships, charter and licensing reviews, and other federal authorizations, while the Federal Reserve is asked to assess whether certain non-banks and uninsured depository institutions can obtain payment accounts and services.

Turkey expanded an eight-day crackdown on illegal betting with two May 18 raids in Antalya and Mersin that brought legal action against 233 additional suspects and cited more than TL 18 billion ($395 million) in alleged transaction volume. Across four major raids since May 11, authorities say the total has exceeded 670 suspects, while an earlier Adana case alleged that cryptocurrency platforms were among the channels used to launder proceeds.

A cluster of three DeFi exploits in May 2026 caused reported losses of $23.2 million across THORChain, Verus-Ethereum Bridge, and Echo Protocol. The incidents were dated May 15 ($10.8M), May 18 ($11.58M), and May 18-19 ($816K), with Echo's attacker also minting 1,000 eBTC at a nominal $76.7M that could not be fully realized due to limited liquidity.

BNB Smart Chain developers completed a large-scale test of post-quantum cryptography on a live-style blockchain setup, swapping transaction signatures to NIST’s ML-DSA-44 and upgrading vote aggregation with pqSTARK proofs. The shift lifted average transaction size from about 110 bytes to roughly 2.5KB and expanded blocks from ~130KB to nearly 2MB at similar load, while throughput declined 40%-50%. The team said the results show quantum-safe migration is feasible with today’s standards, despite clear performance trade-offs.

Polymarket has launched prediction markets linked to private-company performance, with outcomes settled using Nasdaq Private Market data. The rollout targets a universe of nearly 1,600 unicorns valued at more than $5 trillion, and includes an early market tracking Anthropic’s private valuation through Dec. 31, 2026 with tiers from $600 billion to $3 trillion.

On May 18, three French crypto industry stakeholders warned that France's 2019 tax rules can apply a 31.4% charge when regulated euro stablecoins are moved from wallets to bank accounts, potentially discouraging onshore conversions. They said the friction could drive capital offshore and reduce public revenue by an estimated 1 billion to 3 billion euros a year as AI-agent payments increasingly settle in stablecoins.