According to user vxunderground, the European police organization and the Ukrainian national police jointly arrested individuals operating a ransomware organization in Ukraine. It is believed that this organization is the mastermind behind the ransom of "more than 1000 servers".

On November 12th, the European Commission announced in a press release that the European Parliament and Council have reached a final agreement in the trilogue negotiations on the introduction of the European Digital Identity Regulation, pending formal approval from the European Parliament and Council. This is the first trusted and secure digital identity framework for all Europeans, supporting access to public and private online services and fully protecting personal data. In addition to public services, large online platforms designated under the Digital Services Act (including services such as Amazon, Booking.com, or Facebook) and private services that are required by law to verify the identity of their users must also accept EU digital identity wallet logins to their online services. In addition to securely storing digital identities, the wallet also allows users to open bank accounts, make payments, and hold digital documents such as mobile driver's licenses, medical prescriptions, professional certificates, or travel tickets.

On November 8th, the European Banking Authority (EBA) announced the launch of three consultation activities aimed at developing regulatory technical standards (RTS) to clarify the liquidity requirements of relevant token issuers, the minimum content of liquidity management policies, and high-liquidity financial instruments in asset reserves. In addition, the EBA also consulted on draft guidelines for liquidity stress testing to establish common reference parameters for stress testing scenarios. These consultations are part of the delivery of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR) prudential package and constitute the third batch of MiCAR policy products. The consultation activities will continue until February 8, 2024. <br>Regarding the liquidity requirements for asset reserves, the EBA proposes to establish a minimum ratio of asset reserves with maturities of 1 to 5 working days and outlines the overall technology for managing asset reserve liquidity. In addition, the draft RTS specifies the specific minimum deposit amount for assets referred to by tokens. Regarding high-liquidity financial instruments, the EBA has identified financial instruments that can be considered high-liquidity and can bear minimum market risk, credit risk, and concentration risk, as well as the range of asset reserves that can be invested in. In developing these RTS, the EBA needs to consider the correlation between various asset types that may be referenced by asset reference tokens and the high-liquidity financial instruments that issuers may invest in to mitigate their different market value fluctuations.

Tech firms including GitHub, Hugging Face, and Creative Commons have written an open letter urging the European Union to ease upcoming rules for open-source artificial intelligence models. The letter argues that regulating upstream open-source projects as if they are commercial products or deployed AI systems would hinder open source AI development. The group provided five suggestions to ensure that the AI Act works for open source models, including defining AI components clearly and clarifying that collaborative development on open source models does not subject developers to the bill requirements. The European Parliament passed the Act in June, and the next step involves individual negotiations with members of the EU to smooth out the details.

Securitize, an asset tokenization firm, has announced the issuance of the first tokenized equities under the European Union's pilot regime for digital assets. The tokens, representing equity in Spanish real estate investment trust Mancipi Partners, were issued via the smart contract network Avalanche. Trading with equity tokens on secondary markets is set to begin in September. The market for tokenized assets could grow to $16 trillion by 2030, according to a report by Boston Consulting Group.

The final version of the European Union Data Act rules has largely ignored the concerns of the blockchain industry, according to a text seen by CoinDesk. The provisions intended to ensure safe termination of automated data-sharing agreements still refer broadly to "smart contracts" and are not limited to privately owned and permissioned data records as hoped by lobbyists. The text of the law sent to CoinDesk under EU freedom of information laws still refers to "smart contracts" instead of the industry's preferred term of "digital contracts." The law must be formally agreed upon by the parliament and then by governments to pass into law.

The European Union's banking watchdog has called on stablecoin issuers to comply with voluntary 'guiding principles' on managing risks and protecting consumers ahead of mandatory rules that will come into force in June 2024. The EU's Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCAR) was approved in April and is the world's first comprehensive set of rules for trading cryptoassets and issuing stablecoins.

The European Union's new Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) legislation has a daily transaction limit of €200 million for private stablecoins, including Tether and USD Coin. Some experts believe this could hinder the use of stablecoins, and are calling for a revision of the limits.

The European Union's regulatory sandbox has unveiled its first batch of blockchain use cases after receiving nearly 90 applications in April. The initiative, which aims to bridge the regulatory gap between European nations and crypto companies, has selected 20 projects for its first cohort, spread across five European regions.

July 4 (Cointime) - Japan is planning to loosen its regulations on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in order to boost its semiconductor manufacturing industry and overall economic growth. The country aims to have new policies in place by the end of the year that are more aligned with the approach taken by the United States rather than the European Union's stricter regulations. Twitter, now known as X Corp, is facing legal action from former employees who were laid off after the company was taken over by Elon Musk. These employees are accusing the company of discrimination and failing to provide severance pay, and are now pursuing arbitration. Coinbase, a US-based cryptocurrency exchange, saw a 13% increase in share price after Cboe filed an application with the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, with Coinbase helping to monitor ETF manipulation.