us-business

Sometimes the stakes around workplace culture are actual life and death. Other times, they’re more nuanced. The safety lapses at Boeing that led to two deadly crashes in late 2018 and early 2019 are the extreme examples of what happens when people don’t have hard conversations in the office. A group of engineers spotted a major safety risk in their 737 MAX’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, software, and raised concerns in emails, during meetings, and in hallway conversations. Investigators later revealed that these engineers were repeatedly mocked, hushed, and told to move on. The concerned engineers who persisted? Transferred, sidelined, and forced into early retirement. For Boeing, avoiding conflict and uncomfortable truths resulted in accidents that killed 346 people. It also cost the company and its shareholders tens of billions in lost value, a production halt, a negative credit outlook, and immeasurable reputation damage.  The stakes aren’t always this high and the outcomes aren’t always so public. Sometimes, the ignored or silenced employees simply move on to other jobs, or maybe are forced to adjust a presentation in a way that results in the client pitch falling short and the client choosing to work with another company. The ability to navigate hard conversations successfully is a critical relational skill both at home and at work. I’ve been coaching individuals and couples for several years on relationship skills, with an emphasis on long-term romantic partnership, and have written a book about how to eliminate blind spots in our relationships that are leading to negative marriage and relational outcomes (strained, painful relationships and divorce). And over and over again, the conversation always veers back to the idea of trust. This isn’t about lying and infidelity, though without question, those are major influences on relationship trust. Betrayal disappears trust in a hurry. But what usually affects our relationships for the worse are little, often accidental betrayals happening in our blind spots. Think of them as paper cuts. Any one of them isn’t a big deal or relationship-threatening. But the slow, steady buildup of them over several months and years pretty consistently erodes trust and threatens the viability of a relationship. This is also a useful way to think about workplace conflict and the quality of our internal and external business relationships. Most of the time, when we’re all trying hard, we do a fair job of maintaining okay relationships with everything. The emotional stakes are typically lower at work than they are at home. But just like at home, what threatens workplace safety and trust over time are often behaviors or conditions we’re not paying attention to. Behaviors or conditions that might be causing stress, anxiety, pain, anger, sadness, and fear for our work teams. They happen in our blind spots not because we’re idiots, but because the very conditions causing those negative emotional experiences for others are simply not impacting us in the same way. Rank-and-file employees might experience a policy change differently than a manager. The members of an engineering and R&D teams might approach various facets of product development differently than sales and marketing teams would. And it’s our ability as teammates and leaders at work, and as relationship partners and parents at home, to see, understand and — in an ideal world — anticipate the needs of the people who surround us. When we do that successfully, we achieve trust and psychological safety, which in many workplaces is an underrated skill and cultural condition.  Psychological safety and trust are the foundation on which healthy, lasting, high-functioning interpersonal relationships are built, and the same rules apply at work. The Boeing case is extreme but illustrative of why optimizing for psychological safety and trust in the office is necessary for teams to thrive. “Team psychological safety is defined as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking … a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up,” said Amy Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management chair at Harvard Business School in her much-cited 1999 study Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. The conclusion of that study, which tracked 51 teams in manufacturing and healthcare, demonstrated a correlation between “safety and trust” in the workplace and positive business outcomes. Here’s how: When there was high psychological safety among teams, members of those teams would engage in active learning behaviors like asking for help, admitting errors, and experimenting with new ideas — and it’s the team-learning behaviors that consistently result in higher performance outcomes. Edmondson’s work demonstrated that people won’t engage in this critical learning behavior when they don’t feel safe to do so. If people who ask questions are treated as incompetent, and people who take risks that fail to produce desired outcomes or make mistakes are punished by being passed over for advancement opportunities and pay raises, then team safety plummets, and so will its performance. When managers model curiosity and humility by asking for help, they inject psychological safety into the work environment and signal a non-punitive culture, says the business adviser and research professor Brené Brown. “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage,” writes Brown in her book “Daring Greatly.” “Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”  Many of the same behaviors linked with successful romantic partnerships and parent-child relationships are what we’re looking for at work to achieve desired outcomes, so take note if you’re just as interested in crushing marriage and/or parenting as you are in building trust and successful relationships at work through simple, effective habits. William Ury is a co-founder of the Harvard Negotiation Project and the co-author of “Getting to Yes,” a manual on successful negotiation first published more than 40 years ago. Ury’s work suggests that practical steps for cultivating psychological safety and trust in the office — or negotiating conflict or desired outcomes successfully — include: Normalizing open conflict. Schedule time for teams to air differences safety. Embrace “learning

For months, markets have been seeming to run on the idea that the U.S. economy had managed the impossible: a soft landing where growth holds steady, inflation cools, and the Federal Reserve can gently release the brake pedal. It’s been the closest thing to an economic fairytale — Goldilocks with “just right” conditions that keep corporate earnings humming and consumers spending — without tipping into recession. Steady growth, tame inflation, and no angry bears barging in to ruin the breakfast.  On paper, the conditions were looking good: GDP growth that was positive without overheating, and a labor market that — while softening — hasn’t completely fallen apart. But the stability fantasy is fading. As tariffs and inflation set in, the economic porridge is looking a lot, well, lumpier. Economists and Wall Street analysts are increasingly starting to see the kind of shift that could tip the balance from “just right” to “too hot” almost overnight. On Thursday, July’s wholesale inflation numbers via the latest Producer Price Index (PPI) release stunned analysts. The PPI rose 0.9% month-over-month, far exceeding forecasts of about 0.2%, marking the largest increase since early 2022. Headline PPI climbed 3.3% year over year, up sharply from 2.4% the month before, while core PPI — which excludes volatile food and energy categories — increased 0.6% monthly and 2.8% annually, both multiyear highs. Northlight Asset Management chief investment officer Chris Zaccarelli called the release “a most unwelcome surprise.” Services sectors led the rise, with trade services, portfolio fees, and hospitality driving broad-based cost pressures. Goods were also up — particularly in food categories such as vegetables and meats, which are sensitive to tariffs and supply-chain pinch points. Markets responded almost immediately. Stocks dipped, the likelihood of a 50 basis-point rate cut in September fell, and futures traders recalibrated toward only a 25 basis-point move — if any cut at all. The message: Inflation isn’t dead, and any semblance of an economic “fairytale” may be over. Meanwhile, the risk isn’t just a too-hot bowl. A growing chorus of analysts is warning about a stagflation scenario where inflation stays annoyingly high while growth and hiring slow. The July jobs report came in softer than expected, consumer spending has lost some heat, and sector-level data is showing a widening gap between winners and losers. Tech giants are still living in a just-right world; manufacturing, shipping, and other trade-sensitive sectors are already feeling a chill. Wall Street’s bears are restless July’s PPI surprise didn’t create vulnerabilities in the Goldilocks setup so much as it underscored the ones that were already present. Goldman Sachs has, per MarketWatch, been warning for over a month that the Goldilocks equilibrium sits precariously atop three potential “bears”: growth shocks, rate shocks, and a turbulent dollar. The investment bank said that one of those could force the Fed’s hand or send markets recalculating the odds of a rate cut. After this week’s data, all three are looking more likely. A growth shock could come if inflationary pressures persist and the Fed is forced to keep rates higher for longer. While headline CPI has been holding below 3%, a sustained move in wholesale prices often works its way into consumer inflation. If businesses start passing these costs through, households could face renewed price pressures at the same time that job growth is slowing — an unwelcome combination for spending and confidence. A rate shock is another possibility. Treasury yields have already been choppy in recent weeks, reflecting a tug-of-war between hopes for easing and concern about sticky inflation. If bond markets start to doubt that the Fed can cut meaningfully without reigniting inflation, financial conditions could tighten abruptly, hitting sectors from housing to corporate borrowing. The repricing that followed Thursday’s PPI data showed just how quickly those expectations can shift. And finally, the disorderly dollar scenario — more speculative but no less important — lurks. If U.S. policy expectations diverge sharply from those in Europe, Japan, or emerging markets, currency markets could see large and sudden moves. A stronger dollar can export disinflation but hurt U.S. exporters; a weaker dollar can lift import prices and add to inflation pressures. Either way, volatility in the dollar can feed back into broader market sentiment. Thursday’s PPI spike nudged all three closer. Higher producer prices can work their way into consumer inflation, forcing the Fed to hold rates higher for longer — which raises the risk of a rate shock. That can, in turn, sap business investment, strain housing and credit markets, and eventually deliver a growth shock. And if rate expectations lurch sharply while the U.S. runs large fiscal and trade deficits, the dollar could see a bumpy ride. The not too cold, not too hot balance starts to look more like a tightrope. The Fed wants everything “just right” The Goldilocks economy only works if the porridge stays at exactly the right temperature: growth hot enough to avoid recession, inflation cool enough to keep policy makers comfortable. The Fed’s job is to keep it there, and for much of the summer, its patience has been treated as either admirable restraint or dangerous procrastination. This week’s dueling inflation reports tilted that debate toward discipline.  Tuesday’s CPI report seemed to reward the patient camp, showing inflation that was contained enough to keep hopes for a September cut alive. But the mood turned quickly. The PPI release two days later didn’t just upend the storyline — it might have rewritten it. “[The PPI data] is a kick in the teeth for anyone who thought that tariffs would not impact domestic prices in the United States economy,” Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, told Reuters. “This report is a strong validation of the Fed’s wait-and-see stance on policy changes.”  Peter Andersen, the founder of Andersen Capital Management, said that the PPI spike and the economy’s “mixed message” now “reinforces the case that the Fed might say we still don’t have a clear picture yet,” and suggested that no move in September could

Electricity bills are about to get higher for Americans. That is, unless big tech companies foot the bill for their enormous data centers.  Suggested Reading Owned by the likes of Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Meta, these data centers drained more than 4% of the nation’s electricity in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The government agency predicts that number will double or triple to as much as 12% of the country’s electricity by 2028. Related Content Much of this rapid increase is thanks to the rise of AI, which uses up far more energy than browsing a website or streaming movies, the New York Times reported.  On average, Americans are paying 30% more for electricity compared to 2020, the publication reported. Electricity bills are on track to rise an average of 8% nationwide by 2030, according to an analysis by Carnegie Mellon University and North Carolina State University. In states with the most data centers, like Virginia, bills could increase as much as 25%.    Many states are already seeing huge price hikes, the NYT reported. In June, the electricity bill for a typical household in Ohio increased at least $15 a month because of data centers, according to local utility data reviewed by the publication. In Texas, electricity demand could double by 2035, local news station KHOU 11 reported.   Tech companies say they don’t expect residents and small businesses to eat the cost of their data centers. “We don’t want to see other customers bearing the cost of us trying to grow,” Microsoft energy procurement lead Bobby Hollis told the NYT.  Yet, the same companies have lobbied lawmakers, pitched their own pricing schemes, and invested in power companies to supply their own data centers or sell it wholesale, the NYT reported.  Subsidiaries of major tech companies such as Amazon and Google have sold more than $2.7 billion on the wholesale electricity market in the past decade, according to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission data gathered by the NYT. Amazon, which holds the lion’s share, saw its emissions climb 6% last year driven in part by data center construction, Bloomberg reported. 📬 Sign up for the Daily Brief Read More

Scan QR code to install app Important DisclaimersThe content provided on the website includes general news and publications, our personal analysis and opinions, and contents provided by third parties, which are intended for educational and research purposes only. It does not constitute, and should not be read as, any recommendation or advice to take any action whatsoever, including to make any investment or buy any product. When making any financial decision, you should perform your own due diligence checks, apply your own discretion and consult your competent advisors. The content of the website is not personally directed to you, and we does not take into account your financial situation or needs.The information contained in this website is not necessarily provided in real-time nor is it necessarily accurate. Prices provided herein may be provided by market makers and not by exchanges.Any trading or other financial decision you make shall be at your full responsibility, and you must not rely on any information provided through the website. FX Empire does not provide any warranty regarding any of the information contained in the website, and shall bear no responsibility for any trading losses you might incur as a result of using any information contained in the website.The website may include advertisements and other promotional contents, and FX Empire may receive compensation from third parties in connection with the content. FX Empire does not endorse any third party or recommends using any third party’s services, and does not assume responsibility for your use of any such third party’s website or services.FX Empire and its employees, officers, subsidiaries and associates, are not liable nor shall they be held liable for any loss or damage resulting from your use of the website or reliance on the information provided on this website.Risk DisclaimersThis website includes information about cryptocurrencies, contracts for difference (CFDs) and other financial instruments, and about brokers, exchanges and other entities trading in such instruments. Both cryptocurrencies and CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money. You should carefully consider whether you understand how these instruments work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.FX Empire encourages you to perform your own research before making any investment decision, and to avoid investing in any financial instrument which you do not fully understand how it works and what are the risks involved. Read More

Core and Supercore Measures Flash Warning Signs The inflation beat wasn’t limited to headline data. Core PPI, excluding food and energy, also rose 0.9%, tripling consensus expectations. The supercore measure—which strips out food, energy, and trade—gained 0.6%, marking the sharpest monthly rise in 28 months. These figures indicate a reacceleration in underlying price pressures, particularly troubling given that the Federal Reserve watches supercore inflation as a proxy for stickier service-sector pricing. Services Inflation Leads the Surge Much of the July inflation came from services, with final demand services prices climbing 1.1%, also the strongest monthly rise since March 2022. Trade margins rose 2.0%, led by machinery and equipment wholesaling, while traveler accommodation and securities brokerage services added to the momentum. This broad-based rise in service costs could signal more sustained inflation, making it harder for policymakers to justify easing financial conditions. Policy Implications: September Cut Now Less Likely With PPI readings blowing past forecasts across all tiers—headline, core, and supercore—the Federal Reserve may hesitate to ease rates at its upcoming meeting. While one inflation report doesn’t set policy, this print runs counter to recent expectations for a September cut. Markets may now recalibrate toward a “higher-for-longer” stance, particularly if next week’s CPI or employment reports show similar strength. Read More

The Bank of England reduced interest rates by 25 basis points to 4% on August 7. A 5-4 vote in favor of cutting rates reflected a divided Monetary Policy Committee, likely increasing focus on inflation. The next UK CPI report, out on August 20, will likely dictate near-term bets on further BoE rate cuts. Economists forecast the annual inflation rate to rise from 3.6% in June to 4% in July. The BoE may be reluctant to cut rates if inflation climbs higher, pushing back a potential rate cut to November or possibly December. ING Economics signaled a November BoE rate cut, stating: “We still think the Bank’s concerns about inflation will prove overblown. There’s no reason in and of itself that inflation will become more entrenched, simply because headline CPI is sitting above target. It relies on workers being able to chase higher wages, as they bid to retain purchasing power.” However, ING Economics warned: “We’re sticking to our call, but were the next couple of inflation reports to surprise to the upside, or if the recent falls in private-sector employment start to ease off, then we’ll be rethinking.” GBP/USD Reaction to the Q2 GDP Report Before the UK GDP Report, the GBP/USD fell to a low of $1.35639 before climbing to a high of $1.35919. However, in response to the report, the GBP/USD briefly tumbled to a low of $1.35685 before rising to a high of $1.35858 amid easing bets on a September BoE rate cut. On Friday, August 14, the GBP/USD was up 0.05% to $1.35806. Read More

“China’s Finance Ministry issues implementation plan for personal consumption loan interest subsidy policy. Personal consumer loans used for eligible expenses to receive interest subsidies from Sep 2025 to Aug 2026. China sets interest subsidy cap of 3,000 Yuan per borrower per lender on personal consumer loans. Personal consumer loan interest subsidy applies to key sectors, including autos, elder care, education, home improvement, and electronics.” However, economists had mixed views on Beijing’s latest efforts to boost borrowing and private consumption. David Scutt, market analyst at Stone X and Forex.com, remarked: “China has been talking about boosting consumption for years, the latest move focused on access to consumer finance. But you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Credit demand comes with confidence.” Economic Data Underscore Labor Market Issues July’s manufacturing sector PMI and June’s unemployment, and retail sales figures painted a gloomier picture of the Chinese economy. Key economic data trends included: The highly scrutinized S&P Global China General Manufacturing PMI dropped from 50.4 in June to 49.5 in July, falling below the neutral 50 level. A further contraction in new export orders weakened new order growth. Rising input prices and lower output prices pressured profit margins further, forcing manufacturers to manage costs, including cutting staff levels. Retail sales increased 4.8% year-on-year in June, slowing sharply from a 6.4% rise in May. While the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5% in June, July’s Manufacturing PMI survey suggests higher unemployment going into the third quarter. Falling house prices, manufacturing sector woes, deteriorating labor market conditions, and the US and China’s failure to reach a trade deal could further impact consumer confidence. The narrative has changed little since the first quarter despite Beijing’s efforts to boost consumption and the US and China averting a full-blown trade war. Youth Unemployment and Consumer Sentiment Challenge Beijing’s GDP Growth Target In March, we identified several key factors that could limit the effectiveness of Beijing’s monetary policy and fiscal stimulus, including youth unemployment and depressed consumer sentiment. While the national unemployment rate is 5%, youth unemployment eased to 14.5% in June, down from 14.9% in May. Alicia Garcia Herrero, Natixis Asia Pacific Chief Economist, highlighted issues that manufacturing sector workers face, stating: “It is China’s manufacturing workers who suffer while exports – and the economy – keep growing despite the U.S. tariffs. It’s the people who are hammered by this model of huge competition, lower prices, thus you need to lower costs, thus you need to lower wages. It’s a spiral. The model is crazy. I’m sorry, but if you need to export at a loss, do not export.” Garcia Herrero also poured cold water on optimism about a recent fall in the national unemployment rate, stating: “Statistics will not reveal Chinese workers as the main losers in the trade war because they will not become unemployed, but they will get unpaid leave of absence or work fewer hours.” In 2024, around 30% of China’s workforce was in industry, including manufacturing, construction, and mining. Manufacturing and real estate woes have impacted the labor market. However, the recent pickup in services sector activity and job creation could ease the strain. Accounting for almost 50% of the workforce, a continued transition to a consumption-driven economy may resolve some of Beijing’s challenges. In July, the S&P Global China Services PMI rose from 50.6 in June to 52.6. Firms reported a pickup in external demand, rising new work, and staffing levels increasing at the most marked pace since July 2024. Market Reaction: Trade headlines continue to drive market sentiment. The 90-day trade war truce extension and Beijing’s latest stimulus pledges have bolstered demand for Mainland China-listed stocks. The CSI 300 and the Shanghai Composite Index have risen 2.96% and 3.40% in August to date, contributing to 6.68% and 10.26% gains year-to-date. Meanwhile, the Hang Seng Index leads the way, surging 28.05% YTD, outperforming Mainland equity markets and the Nasdaq Composite Index (+12.44% YTD). Read More

Scott Bessent Suggests Government Bitcoin Purchases Remain a Possibility The Treasury Secretary’s late-Thursday afternoon tweet seemingly contradicted his statement from earlier in the day. Aug 14, 2025, 8:40 p.m. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent began Thursday by dashing the hopes of at least some bitcoiners, saying the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve would be made up of the $15 billion to $20 billion already held by the government, but that there was no intention of making any fresh purchases. He ended the day, however, by seemingly contradicting those remarks, saying his department is “committed to exploring budget-neutral pathways to acquire more Bitcoin to expand the reserve.” The fresh buys would be in addition to tokens forfeited to the government, which will be the “foundation” of the reserve, Bessent said. U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March to create a strategic bitcoin reserve which Bessent has advocated for. Earlier this month, Bo Hines, the leader of the White House’s Council of Advisors on Digital Assets — whose tasks, among other things, included the SBR — exited his position. Bitcoin continued to trade at about $118,000 late in the U.S. afternoon Thursday, down sharply since hitting a new record high of $124,000 just hours earlier. The bulk of the decline came after a far stronger than anticipated Producer Price Index report, which called into question the idea that inflation is receding enough for the Federal Reserve to trim interest rates in September. Helene Braun Helene is a New York-based markets reporter at CoinDesk, covering the latest news from Wall Street, the rise of the spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds and updates on crypto markets. She is a graduate of New York University’s business and economic reporting program and has appeared on CBS News, YahooFinance and Nasdaq TradeTalks. She holds BTC and ETH. X icon More For You Altcoin Season Could Begin in September as Bitcoin’s Grip on Crypto Market Weakens: Coinbase Institutional Coinbase expects falling bitcoin dominance, improving liquidity and renewed investor appetite to shift gains toward altcoins starting in September. What to know: Coinbase Institutional’s latest research report says September could mark the start of an altcoin season, citing three key market shifts. Falling bitcoin dominance and higher liquidity may drive altcoin outperformance. Renewed investor risk appetite could extend the rally into year-end. Read full story Read More

U.S. bankers are pushing hard for revisions of the new stablecoin law even before regulators have begun the first steps of writing the rules. Updated Aug 14, 2025, 9:51 p.m. Published Aug 14, 2025, 8:34 p.m. Wall Street bankers are hammering away at some provisions of the new U.S. stablecoin law that was hailed by President Donald Trump and the crypto sector as a huge first step toward establishing a fully regulated U.S. industry, and the banks are joined by unusual bedfellows from the consumer-advocate world in sounding alarms. Hoping to revise and cut provisions that might threaten aspects of the current financial system, the American Bankers Association and other bank lobbying groups aligned in a letter this week with Americans for Financial Reform — usually a staunch opponent of Wall Street’s policy aims — and the National Consumer Law Center. One provision of the stablecoin law known as the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act lets a stablecoin-issuing subsidiary of a state-chartered uninsured depository institution run money-transmission and custody services nationwide, which the bankers argue bypasses existing state licensing and oversight. Their letter asked several key U.S. senators to insist that whole section be erased entirely. “Ignoring state law in this regard invites regulatory arbitrage, allowing certain uninsured depository institutions special privileges to operate across state lines as federally insured banks currently do, but without the panoply of regulatory and supervisory requirements, or limitations on preemption applicable to those institutions,” the August 13 letter argued. The bank lobbyists, also cooperated in a separate effort to protect deposits and other core aspects of their businesses from the GENIUS Act, arguing in another letter to lawmakers this week that the law leaves an opening for crypto firms to offer returns on stablecoins. While the law bans stablecoin issuers themselves from offering interest or yield, it doesn’t stop the issuers’ affiliates or exchanges from doing so indirectly. The bankers fear a massive loss of deposits and money-market fund activity from the resulting rivalry stablecoins might offer. “Congress must protect the flow of credit to American businesses and families and the stability of the most important financial market by closing the stablecoin payment of interest loophole,” according to the groups, including the ABA, Bank Policy Institute, Financial Services Forum and others. Banks turn deposits into loans, so the lack of deposits threatens necessary U.S. lending. Faryar Shirzad, the chief policy officer at U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase, criticized the banks’ position in postings on social media site X. “Congress shouldn’t be in the business of passing legislation that takes away consumer choice and the opportunity for the average person to earn returns on their hard-earned dollars,” he wrote, additionally arguing that the $6 trillion figure on what desposits may be at stake is overblown. “Let’s play along for a second,” Shirzad added. “If customers really would move $6T away from banks into stablecoins, what does that say about what value consumers feel like they’re getting from their banks?” The GENIUS Act was signed into law by President Trump, but the bigger and more complex legislation to regulate U.S. crypto markets is still pending. That future bill, which already passed the House of Representatives as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, could still overhaul provisions of the stablecoin law, even before that new law is converted into rules by the U.S. financial regulators. That’s what the bankers are advocating, alongside their temporary customer-advocate allies. Read More: Banks Must Adopt Crypto or ‘Be Extinct in 10 Years,’ Eric Trump Says UPDATE (August 14, 2025, 21:51 UTC): Adds comment from Coinbase’s Faryar Shirzad. Jesse Hamilton Jesse Hamilton is CoinDesk’s deputy managing editor on the Global Policy and Regulation team, based in Washington, D.C. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022, he worked for more than a decade covering Wall Street regulation at Bloomberg News and Businessweek, writing about the early whisperings among federal agencies trying to decide what to do about crypto. He’s won several national honors in his reporting career, including from his time as a war correspondent in Iraq and as a police reporter for newspapers. Jesse is a graduate of Western Washington University, where he studied journalism and history. He has no crypto holdings. X icon More For You Hong Kong Regulator Tightens Custody Standards for Licensed Crypto Exchanges A regulatory review earlier this year found weaknesses in some exchanges’ cyber defenses, prompting the SFC to set new custody standards for licensed platforms. What to know: Hong Kong’s securities watchdog introduced new custody requirements for licensed crypto exchanges to protect client assets. The guidelines set standards for management responsibility, cold wallet operations and real-time threat monitoring. These measures are part of Hong Kong’s strategy to become Asia’s digital asset hub and differentiate itself from Singapore. Read full story Read More

U.S. officials accused Garantex, Grinex, A7A5 token issuers and executives of laundering ransomware proceeds and evading sanctions. Aug 14, 2025, 8:23 p.m. The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Thursday sanctioned a network of companies, exchanges and executives linked to shuttered Russian crypto exchange Garantex and the ruble-backed stablecoin A7A5, accusing them of helping Moscow skirt international sanctions. Garantex, founded in 2019 and once licensed in Estonia, processed more than $100 million in transactions linked to ransomware and darknet activity, OFAC said. U.S. officials, working with German and Finnish police, seized its web domain and froze $26 million in March, which quickly prompted the creation of its successor Grinex to continue operations, officials said. OFAC said on Thursday that Grinex transferred customer funds from Garantex and used the A7A5 token to restore access after the seizures. Issued by Kyrgyzstan-based firm Old Vector, A7A5 was created for Russian users of A7 LLC, a cross-border settlement platform, the agency said. It is backed by Russia’s state-owned Promsvyazbank (PSB), who was sanctioned for financing the defense industry, and Moldovan politician Ilan Shor, who was convicted in a $1 billion bank fraud case, the Centre of Information Resilience reported. OFAC sanctioned Old Vector, A7 LLC and its subsidiaries A71 and A7 Agent, blocking them from the U.S. dollar-based financial system and barring U.S. persons from interacting with any of these entities or more than a dozen crypto addresses tied to them. Key Garantex executives Sergey Mendeleev, Aleksandr Mira Serda and Pavel Karavatsky were also sanctioned, along with Mendeleev’s firms InDeFi Bank and Exved, accused of enabling sanctioned Russian businesses to trade through crypto rails. Treasury officials said the action, coordinated with the U.S. Secret Service and the FBI, was aimed to cut off digital asset channels used for ransomware and sanctions evasion. “Exploiting cryptocurrency exchanges to launder money and facilitate ransomware attacks not only threatens our national security, but also tarnishes the reputations of legitimate virtual asset service providers,” said John K. Hurley, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, in a statement. Crypto rails to evade sanctions A7A5 has grown rapidly this year, processing about $1 billion a day by July, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic’s report. The firm said the token underpins a “sanctions evasion scheme” enabling Russian companies to settle cross-border payments outside the traditional banking system. Chainalysis estimated the token’s cumulative transaction volume exceeded $51 billion through July, warning it offers “a new, crypto-native avenue to bypass the ever-tightening sanctions against Russia.” “The emergence of the A7A5 network sanctioned today further illustrates how Russia is operationalizing these alternative payment rails,” the firm said. Read more: Tether, Tron-Backed T3 Financial Crime Unit Has Frozen $250M of Criminal Assets in a Year Krisztian Sandor Krisztian Sandor is a U.S. markets reporter focusing on stablecoins, tokenization, real-world assets. He graduated from New York University’s business and economic reporting program before joining CoinDesk. He holds BTC, SOL and ETH. X icon More For You Hong Kong Regulator Tightens Custody Standards for Licensed Crypto Exchanges A regulatory review earlier this year found weaknesses in some exchanges’ cyber defenses, prompting the SFC to set new custody standards for licensed platforms. What to know: Hong Kong’s securities watchdog introduced new custody requirements for licensed crypto exchanges to protect client assets. The guidelines set standards for management responsibility, cold wallet operations and real-time threat monitoring. These measures are part of Hong Kong’s strategy to become Asia’s digital asset hub and differentiate itself from Singapore. Read full story Read More