Europe’s Crypto Reset Is Underway as Venga Joins the First Wave of MiCA-Approved Firms

Amazon fined $2.25M for withholding evidence from fraud victims

The FTC has fined Amazon $2.25 million for violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act by blocking identity theft victims from accessing records of fraudulent transactions made in their names. Amazon customer service agents denied requests citing 'privacy' or 'security' reasons, refused to comply even when law enforcement submitted authorized requests on behalf of victims, and when records were shared, they were provided outside the required 30-day window. Under the proposed settlement order, Amazon must provide lawfully requested records within 30 days and notify consumers who requested records since April 2024 but never received them. This follows a pattern of regulatory penalties for Amazon, including a $25 million fine for Alexa children's privacy violations and a $2.5 billion Prime membership lawsuit settlement.

Cross-border payroll: the $200B gap with no infrastructure

Over $200 billion in employer-originated wages crosses international borders annually, yet the infrastructure supporting it remains fragmented — local banks, regional vendors, and manual compliance processes. Multiplier, a Singapore-based EOR platform, is positioning itself as the 'Global Exchange for Work' by owning legal entities in 160+ countries and integrating compliance, contracts, and payments into a single flow. In April 2026, it launched Global Payroll Payments via a partnership with fintech Navro, covering tax withholding, statutory deductions, and regulatory reporting across 95 countries in one payment flow. The company processes $2 billion in annual wages, doubling year-over-year, and serves 2,700+ companies. For European businesses, Multiplier also introduced Non-Resident Employer Payroll to handle cross-border EU employment without requiring local legal entities. The broader argument: cross-border employment needs purpose-built infrastructure, not stitched-together point solutions.

MDOTM raises $27M for its AI wealth-management platform

London-based MDOTM has raised $27M in a growth-equity round led by Expedition Growth Capital, bringing total funding to $36.5M. The company sells an AI platform called Sphere to banks and asset managers, which now supports over $100B in assets across 60+ institutions including Morgan Stanley, Amundi, and Zurich Bank. Sphere automates the tedious middle-office work of portfolio rebalancing, aligning portfolios with house views, and generating client reports via a generative AI layer called StoryFolio. The funding will support hiring and expansion into US and European markets. The company operates under FCA oversight and emphasizes human control and AI explainability to satisfy regulatory requirements.

Venice AI becomes a unicorn with $65M Series A as its privacy-first AI platform takes off

Venice AI has raised a $65 million Series A at a $1 billion valuation, led by crypto-focused VC Dragonfly with participation from Coinbase Ventures. The privacy-first AI platform, founded by crypto veteran Erik Voorhees, hosts uncensored open-source models and routes queries to closed-source models with client-side encryption and no data storage. Already profitable with over $70M annualized run-rate revenue, Venice serves 3 million active users and 1.7 million API calls per day. The company plans to use the funding to purchase GPUs and build its own data centers to improve gross margins.

Investec deploying AI tools to every employee

Investec has rolled out Microsoft Copilot to all 8,000 employees across South Africa, the UK, and other markets, claiming to be the first South African organisation to publicly announce a full-workforce AI deployment. The bank reports over 800 AI agents in active use, collectively freeing up more than 350,000 staff hours annually. Investec frames the deployment as augmenting rather than replacing workers, emphasising a 'human-first' philosophy. The freed capacity is described as being reinvested into client service and advisory work, though the bank did not disclose how time savings are measured or any impact on headcount.

Pasqal and Crédit Agricole CIB Deepen Partnership on Quantum Finance Applications

Crédit Agricole CIB and Pasqal have signed a strategic partnership to industrialize quantum computing for capital markets, targeting production use cases by 2028. Building on collaboration since 2019, the partnership covers three tracks: deploying quantum-inspired algorithms on classical infrastructure, operational testing on Pasqal's neutral-atom quantum computers, and hybrid quantum-classical workflows. Focus areas include monitoring capital reserve consumption, risk-weighted assets, counterparty credit risk, and portfolio optimization. Early results suggest quantum algorithms can outperform classical approaches under specific conditions.

Visa, Mastercard and 140 firms launch Open USD, a stablecoin built to undercut Circle

Một liên minh gồm hơn 140 công ty, bao gồm Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, BlackRock và Google, vừa ra mắt Open USD (OUSD) – một stablecoin neo giá theo USD do tổ chức độc lập Open Standard vận hành. Khác với Circle hay Tether, OUSD cho phép đúc và đổi tự do không giới hạn khối lượng, đồng thời phân phối hầu hết lợi tức từ dự trữ cho các đối tác thay vì chỉ một bên phát hành, nhằm cạnh tranh trực tiếp mô hình doanh thu chính của Circle.

Lập trình viên nên đọc bài này để hiểu về cơ chế kỹ thuật và quy mô quy định mới của stablecoin, đặc biệt là cách Open USD (OUSD) thiết kế lại mô hình kinh doanh và phân phối lợi nhuận, giúp bạn cập nhật về xu hướng phát triển hệ sinh thái tiền điện tử và ứng dụng trong các dự án tương lai.