In the past 24 hours, global regulators have been quite active.

Starting with Europe, the Swedish central bank has just released a policy research report on stablecoins—looks like the Nordics are getting restless too. In the US, the FDIC is going even further; reportedly, they plan to announce the first draft of stablecoin issuance regulations under the GENIUS Act as soon as this month. The speed here definitely exceeds expectations.

Asia isn't idle either. South Korea's ruling party has declared its intention to pass the "Basic Digital Assets Act" by January next year. If this actually comes to fruition, the entire East Asian compliance landscape could be reshuffled. Things are also getting interesting in Israel—as their digital shekel project moves forward, the central bank has begun signaling plans to strengthen stablecoin regulation. It seems that every country is racing ahead in the CBDC arena.

It's also turbulent on the exchange front. Coinbase executive and board member Marc Andreessen is being sued by shareholders, though the specific allegations haven't been fully disclosed yet. Lawsuits of this magnitude will definitely impact their future strategic plans. Prediction platform Kalshi, after losing its injunction protection in Nevada, is scrambling to find new ways to fend off state regulatory enforcement—the federal vs. state regulatory game in the US is truly complex.

But there’s also good news: Ripple has obtained approval from Singapore’s central bank to expand its payments business, marking a key milestone in their global compliance roadmap. Meanwhile, Gleec has spent $23.5 million to acquire Komodo’s cross-chain technology, indicating that the trend of infrastructure consolidation is still ongoing.

Overall, it feels like the pace of regulatory acceleration and institutional reshuffling at the start of 2025 could be even more aggressive than last year.