SEC Ends Justin Sun Crypto Case With Settlement

Plus: 🇷🇺 Russia advances crypto and stablecoin legislation

Author

Juan Aranovich
March 06, 2026

Hi! In today’s edition:

  • ⚖️ SEC settles lawsuit with Justin Sun and closes Tron case

  • 🇷🇺 Russia moves toward formal crypto and stablecoin regulation

  • 🎙️ DEX in the City examines prediction markets and national security risks

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SEC Settles With Justin Sun, Closes Long Running Tron Case

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has reached a settlement in its lawsuit against Tron founder Justin Sun, bringing an end to a case that began in 2023. Under the agreement, Rainberry Inc., the company behind the BitTorrent protocol and the BTT token, will pay a $10 million civil penalty and agree not to violate securities laws in the future.

In exchange, the SEC will dismiss all claims against Sun, the Tron Foundation, and the BitTorrent Foundation. The dismissal is with prejudice, meaning the regulator cannot bring the same allegations again. The proposed settlement still requires approval from a federal judge.

The original lawsuit accused Sun and his affiliated companies of selling unregistered securities through TRX and BTT tokens, as well as manipulating the price of TRX through wash trading and paying celebrities to promote the tokens without proper disclosure.

The resolution arrives as the SEC has scaled back several crypto enforcement actions over the past year. Sun said the outcome brings closure and that he plans to continue building while working with regulators on clearer rules for the industry.

Russia Moves to Formalize Crypto and Stablecoin Rules

Russia is accelerating its effort to bring crypto into a clearer legal framework, with policymakers working on both a stablecoin bill and a broader plan to integrate digital assets into the country’s financial system.

Officials at the Ministry of Finance say they are considering separate legislation focused specifically on stablecoins rather than bundling them into a broader crypto exchange law. Alexey Yakovlev, director of the ministry’s financial policy department, said stablecoins hold “enormous, even colossal potential,” particularly for cross border payments. Russian officials have previously suggested that dollar pegged or ruble linked stablecoins could help companies continue international trade despite Western sanctions.

At the same time, the Bank of Russia is proposing a framework that would allow banks and brokerage firms to run crypto exchanges using their existing financial licenses through a simplified notification process. Governor Elvira Nabiullina said the approach would rely on the banking sector’s existing anti money laundering systems while initially limiting crypto exposure to 1% of a bank’s capital.

Draft legislation is expected to reach the State Duma in the coming months, with the broader regulatory framework potentially taking effect July 1, 2026, signaling Russia’s push to bring crypto activity under formal oversight.

DEX in the City: How Prediction Markets Pose a National Security Risk

The crew discusses whether prediction markets enable “Bloomberg terminal espionage,,” wonder how to regulate markets that could be on anything, dive into why the OCC is saying no to stablecoin yield and more.

Prediction markets are in the spotlight again. On one hand adoption appears to be growing as the Nasdaq has announced plans of entering the space. On the other hand, they scrutinize markets that pose a national security risk.

In this DEX in the City episode, hosts Jessi Brooks, Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos and TuongVy Le discuss suspected insider trading activity around a market tied to the strikes on Iran. Beyond ethical concerns about betting on war, they grapple with the definition of “a death market” and ask whether all prediction markets around an individual are death markets.

The big question: How can these markets on literally any possible event be policed?

Plus, is Jane Street manipulating the Bitcoin market? Why the OCC is saying NO to stablecoin yield and the takeaway from Jack Dorsey’s Block layoffs.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,Fountain, Podcast Addict,Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

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  • ⚖️₿ A U.S. federal judge froze 70.6 bitcoin tied to a dispute between crypto lender BlockFills and creditor Dominion Capital, blocking asset transfers after allegations that BlockFills misused customer funds and accumulated roughly $75 million in losses while suspending withdrawals.

  • 🏦🪙 ZeroHash, a Chicago-based crypto infrastructure company that powers digital-asset services for firms like Morgan Stanley and Stripe, applied for a U.S. national trust bank charter, aiming to move its stablecoin issuance, custody, and reserve management under a single federal regulatory framework instead of navigating dozens of state licenses.

  • 🛡️🔍 Aave Labs, the development team behind the major decentralized lending protocol Aave, unveiled a year-long security program for its upcoming V4 upgrade, combining formal mathematical code verification, multiple independent audits, bug bounties, and public testing funded by a $1.5 million DAO-approved security budget.

  • 🚨🧱 Bitcoin-focused DeFi platform Solv Protocol suffered a $2.7 million exploit after an attacker abused a double-mint bug, artificially inflating its BRO vault tokens and converting them into 38 SolvBTC, though the project pledged to reimburse the roughly ten affected users.

  • 📈🔗 Kraken launched xChange, a unified onchain trading engine for tokenized stocks, enabling investors to trade over 70 blockchain-based versions of U.S. equities and ETFs like Apple, Tesla, and the S&P 500 across Ethereum and Solana while syncing prices with traditional stock markets.

  • 💰📊 Apollo Crypto, a digital-asset investment firm, partnered with Midas and staking infrastructure provider Everstake to launch mEVUSD, a tokenized strategy designed for institutions to earn roughly 7–12% annual returns on idle stablecoins through diversified lending and neutral trading strategies that don’t rely on crypto price swings.

  • 🏛️🔗 Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, invested in crypto exchange OKX at a $25 billion valuation, forming a partnership to explore trading tokenized versions of NYSE-listed stocks and derivatives on blockchain rails while sharing market data between the platforms.

  • 📈🤝 Crossover Markets, a crypto trading technology firm focused on institutional liquidity, raised $31 million at a $200 million valuation in a funding round led by electronic trading giant Tradeweb, which plans to route its global clients’ orders into Crossover’s high-speed crypto trading network.

  • 🏗️💻 Core Scientific, a Texas-based digital infrastructure and bitcoin mining company pivoting toward AI data centers, secured a $500 million loan from Morgan Stanley with the option to expand to $1 billion, funding new data center construction, equipment purchases, and energy agreements.