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Dren Hima

ABOUT AUTHOR

Dren Hima is Head of Research at Coincub, leading research across digital asset regulation, licensing, market structure, tokenization and institutional adoption.

RegulationTokenization
Tokenized Collateral Moves Faster and Weighs the Same
US bank regulators give an eligible tokenized security the same haircuts as its conventional form, so a tokenized two-year Treasury note keeps the 2% in the capital rule’s table. ESMA’s review of tokenized CCP collateral keeps the eligible asset list fixed. Broadridge’s repo ledger averaged $359 billion a day in September 2026, while every tokenized […]...
3 days ago
RegulationWeb 3.0
Audited Up to Here: What a Smart Contract Audit Checks
Smart contract exploits cost $905.4 million across 122 protocols during 2025. Cetus lost $223 million and Balancer roughly $128 million, and in both cases the broken code sat outside the scope of the audits covering those protocols. Automation is fast and partial, and the best three-tool combination in a 2025 evaluation caught 76.78% of annotated […]...
4 weeks ago
Regulation
Possession Is Nine Tenths of the Ledger: Tokenized Asset Ownership
Of the four tokenization structures SEC staff mapped in January 2026, one moves the security itself. The September exemptive order makes every venue verify that a tokenized share carries the same dividend, voting, and liquidation rights as the conventional one. Swiss law lets a qualifying ledger hold the security itself under four statutory conditions, while […]...
4 weeks ago
Regulation
Outsourcing Crypto Compliance Is a Staffing Decision
MiCA Article 73 and FCA SYSC 8.1.8R both require an outsourcing firm to keep in-house expertise for evaluating the vendor’s work. A European CASP carries MiCA and DORA at once, and Article 73 compliance settles nothing under DORA. Supervisors can order a firm to drop a designated critical ICT provider. Washington proposed replacing the 2023 […]...
4 weeks ago
Regulation
Can Stablecoin Issuers Freeze Funds Without a Court Order?
Section 4(a)(6)(B) allows issuance only where the issuer can comply with a lawful order to seize, freeze, burn or block its tokens. Tether burns frozen balances, Circle blocks transfers without burning, and the Paxos contract behind PYUSD can wipe a frozen address. Both major issuers reserve the right to move before a court order exists, […]...
1 month ago
Regulation
Token Listing Due Diligence: The Venue Owns the Paper
MiCA Article 5(2) hands the crypto-asset white paper obligations to any trading platform that admits a token on its own initiative. Article 15 extends civil liability to the operator and its management body, and contractual exclusions have no legal effect. Article 76 bars assets that hide holders behind an anonymization function. Gotbit’s founder forfeited around […]...
1 month ago
Crypto LicenseRegulation
Custody Won the MiCA Register: How to Scope CASP Permissions
Custody appears on 194 of the roughly 330 CASP authorizations on ESMA’s register; operating a trading platform appears on twenty. The industry licensed itself as broker-dealers with wallets. Annex IV Class 1/2/3 are capital floors keyed to your highest-risk service, and Article 59 requires the authorization to name each service individually. Class 3 grants nothing […]...
1 month ago
Crypto LicenseRegulation
The Canada MSB Registry of Convenience
Xeltox Enterprises, trading as Cryptomus, was a registered money services business throughout the conduct that drew a $176,960,190 FINTRAC penalty in October 2025, roughly seven times the more than $25 million FINTRAC issued across all 23 Notices of Violation in 2024-25. The penalty is under appeal in Federal Court. The public registry runs four statuses, […]...
2 months ago
Crypto LicenseRegulation
RPAA Acquisition of Control: The Target Files, the Buyer Waits
The registered PSP being acquired files the section 24 application, and it must be re-registered before the transaction closes, which puts the closing condition in the hands of the party the buyer is negotiating against. The Bank’s 45-day window is a period to decide whether to refuse a completed application, and the Minister of Finance […]...
2 months ago
Crypto LicenseRegulation
Money Transmitter License Cost by State: The Fee Is Never the Cost
The model law says a license “is not transferable or assignable,” which is why an equity purchase preserves the licensed entity and an asset purchase leaves the buyer applying from scratch, and the MTMA contains no merger or succession provision at all, so a deal in which the licensee stops existing has no statutory answer. […]...
2 months ago
Regulation
AUSTRAC VASP vs Remittance Registration: One Clause Decides Which Register
A registrable remittance service is an item 29 or 30 value transfer that does not involve a transfer of virtual assets, so the same designated service sends you to a different register depending only on what moved, and a business doing both flows sits on both registers. The DCE-to-VASP change took the regulated set from […]...
2 months ago
Regulation
Canada Stablecoin Act Has a Trust Issue
The Stablecoin Act received Royal Assent on 26 March 2026 and is still tagged “[Act not in force]”, with commencement left to a Governor in Council order that has not been made and Finance Canada pointing at 2027. Section 12 excludes financial institutions, and the Act borrows the Bank Act definition, which covers provincially chartered […]...
2 months ago
RegulationSafety
Off the Books: Blockchain Analytics and the RWA Register Problem
The ECB found that none of the largest tokenized money market funds is fully on-chain, and around half still use a traditional book-entry ledger as the primary record of ownership. Analytics reading those chains is reading a notification layer. Crypto analytics was built to de-anonymize a pseudonymous ledger. ERC-3643 tokens are identity-bound at the gate […]...
2 months ago
Regulation
The Monthly Register – Crypto Licensing in July 2026
18 firms were added to the MiCA register in July across 11 European jurisdictions, with Germany taking six and Bulgaria and Liechtenstein two each. Entries reach the register through both of MiCA’s routes, authorization and notification. Five of Germany’s six are cooperative banks recorded with one permitted service, the execution of client orders, with no […]...
3 months ago
CryptoRegulation
Crypto Divorce: Irreconcilable Differences, Irreversible Transactions
No jurisdiction covered here has built a crypto-specific divorce regime, so classification runs on the same acquisition, source-of-funds and commingling rules that govern brokerage accounts and inherited land. The valuation date does most of the damage. Florida allows different assets to be valued on different dates, Ontario locks the number at separation regardless of what […]...
3 months ago
Regulation
How Japan Regulates Crypto: The Old Rules Still Run
Japan enacted its FIEA reform on 15 July 2026, but the crypto provisions have not commenced, so the Payment Services Act framework from 2017 is still the live rulebook, with the securities-law regime expected to bite around 2027. Custody is the strictest part of the current regime and survives the shift: at least 95% of […]...
3 months ago
CryptoRegulation
The Balkan Crypto Boom Is a Payments Story Wearing a Mining Costume
The region’s center of gravity is software, exchanges, and payment rails; the closest thing to a mining story is Slovenia’s NiceHash marketplace, which sells other people’s hashpower. Two incompatible regulatory grammars now split the map: EU members (Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Romania, Slovenia) converging under MiCA since 30 December 2024, and non-EU states each writing their [...
3 months ago
CryptoCryptocurrenciesRegulation
Licensed to Fill – How Crypto Took Over the Plumbing of Finance
Paxos became the first blockchain-native firm registered as an SEC clearing agency in May 2026, entering the DTCC’s regulatory category while the DTCC itself prepares to tokenise Russell 1000 equities on Stellar in 2027, so the convergence now runs in both directions. The GENIUS Act turned stablecoin issuers into narrow banks in all but name, […]...
3 months ago
Regulation
First Crypto Exchange License in Kazakhstan Went to a Six-Week-Old Startup
The National Bank of Kazakhstan issued its first national crypto exchange license on 2 July 2026 to Pax Finance, a firm registered on 20 May 2026 and capitalized at the 50-million-tenge (~$106,000) legal minimum, bypassing established AIFC platforms like Binance and Bybit. The licensed category is a conversion-and-custody “exchanger” with branches and crypto ATMs, closer […]...
3 months ago
CryptoRegulationWeb 3.0
The Humanitarian Blockchain That Works Is the One You Never See 
The permissioned coordination ledger (WFP’s Building Blocks) scaled into the hundreds of millions, and its strongest payoff is preventing duplicate assistance, while the public-chain stablecoin rail that got the headlines (UNHCR on Stellar) has moved $4.6m since 2022 and remains a pilot. Stablecoins earn their place narrowly, in corridors where banking is absent, illegal, dangerous, [&hellip...
4 months ago
Regulation
Shariah-Compliant Stablecoins: Where the Yield Goes Decides Everything 
The compliance question isn’t whether crypto is halal, it’s where the reserve yield goes. Conventional stablecoins make their money on interest-bearing reserves, and that is the half an Islamic bank has to rebuild. Malaysia’s Shariah Advisory Council changes the fiqh category by what backs the token, so a fiat-pegged coin and a gold-pegged coin are […]...
4 months ago
CryptoReal World Assets (RWA)RegulationWeb 3.0
Space Runs on Equity and Web3 Funds the Utility Bill
Web3 changes the plumbing of space financing (ticket size, settlement, incentive distribution) without touching the economics. Space stays capital-intensive and dependent on spectrum, launch access, and government customers. The scale gap is structural. PIF managing north of $900bn and negotiating a ~$5bn SpaceX anchor sits against MoonDAO’s $184,000 deployed across all of 2025, roughly five...
4 months ago
CryptoRegulationWeb 3.0
The House Doesn’t Always Win, but Insiders Do 
Prediction markets are increasingly regulated, but the law is still unsettled, and the Van Dyke case made insider-trading-style enforcement a real risk....
5 months ago
Crypto CrimeRegulationSafety
Follow the Coin: How Investigators Turn Public Ledgers Into Evidence
The “follow the money” model still works. Investigators trace funds on-chain until they hit an exchange, then subpoena the KYC records. Mixers and privacy coins make tracing harder, but not impossible. Mixer takedowns produce historical data that feeds future investigations. International cooperation is built in. MLATs, Europol, and FinCEN’s Rapid Response Program move evidence a...
5 months ago