Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse confirmed on X on Wednesday that the company is applying for a license with the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), following an earlier report by The Wall Street Journal.

“True to our long-standing compliance roots, Ripple is applying for a national bank charter from the OCC,” he wrote. 

Garlinghouse said if the license is approved, it would be a “new (and unique!) benchmark for trust in the stablecoin market” as the firm would be under federal and state oversight — with the New York Department of Financial Services already regulating its Ripple USD stablecoin.

Global bank Standard Chartered is bullish on Bitcoin for the rest of the year, citing increasing corporate treasury buying and strong exchange-traded fund inflows.

Standard Chartered expects Bitcoin to print new highs of $135,000 by the end of the third quarter and then break $200,000 by the end of the year, the bank’s digital asset research head, Geoff Kendrick, said in a Wednesday report shared with Cointelegraph.

“Thanks to increased investor flows, we believe BTC has moved beyond the previous dynamic whereby prices fell 18 months after a ‘halving’ cycle,” Kendrick said, adding that the common halving trend would have led to price declines in September or October 2025.

FTX’s bankruptcy estate has raised concerns over payouts to creditors in countries with ambiguous or restrictive cryptocurrency regulations.

On Wednesday, the FTX estate filed a motion with the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, seeking authorization for the FTX Recovery Trust to freeze distributions to creditors in “potentially restricted foreign jurisdictions.”

The jurisdictions — 49 countries in total — have unclear or restrictive crypto laws, potentially posing risks due to complex cross-border legal implications.

“Distributions made by or on behalf of the FTX Recovery Trust into jurisdictions in violation of these legal restrictions may trigger fines and penalties, including personal liability for directors and officers, and/or criminal penalties up to and including imprisonment,” the filing reads.

A GitHub repository posing as a legitimate Solana trading bot has been exposed for reportedly hiding crypto-stealing malware.

According to a Friday report by blockchain security firm SlowMist, the now-deleted solana-pumpfun-bot repository hosted by account “zldp2002” mimicked a real open-source tool to harvest user credentials. SlowMist reportedly launched the investigation after a user found that their funds had been stolen on Thursday.

The malicious GitHub repository in question featured “a relatively high number of stars and forks,” SlowMist said. All code commits across all its directories were made about three weeks ago, with apparent irregularities and a lack of consistent pattern that, according to SlowMist, would indicate a legitimate project.

Authorities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have reportedly taken Ildar Ilham, the founder of the decentralized finance protocol WhiteRock Finance, into custody as part of allegations over a $30-million scam through ZKasino. 

According to a Thursday X post from crypto sleuth ZachXBT, UAE authorities arrested Ilham in connection with an investigation into “wide-scale fraud” surrounding ZKasino. ZachXBT’s report suggested that WhiteRock was connected to ZKasino’s $30 million fundraising. 

The alleged investor scam followed ZKasino’s launch in April 2024, with the platform promising an airdrop of its native token to select users. However, reports indicate that more than a year later, the funds still have not been returned.

At the end of the week, Bitcoin is at $108,193, Ether at $2,526 and at $2.22. The total market cap is at $3.33 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Pudgy Penguins at 46.51%, Bonk at 37.44% and Fartcoin at 16.48%.

The top three altcoin losers of the week are DeXe at 15.03%, Pi (PI) at 11.28% and Kaia (KAIA) at 9.61%. For more info…