| gm Bankless Nation,
Wall Street’s biggest names are ready to go on the offensive against Trump's crypto-friendly regulators. Today's Issue ⬇️ - ☀️ Need to Know: Roman Storm Back in Court?
Prosecutors want to bring the crypto dev back to trial. - 🗣️ News Analysis: The Banking Turf War Begins
Banks are prepping a new offensive against crypto.
Sponsor: Mercuryo — Infrastructure powering the crypto economy.
. . . NEED TO KNOW Roman Storm Back in Court? - 🧑⚖️ Roman Storm Facing New Trial, DOJ Revives Tornado Cash Prosecution. Federal prosecutors have submitted a retrial request in their case against Storm for charges of sanction evasion and money laundering.
- 🤖 Polymarket Taps AI to Police Prediction Market Integrity. Palantir and TWG AI have developed tools to help Polymarket prevent, identify, and report suspicious trading activity.
- 🎰 Federal Judge Scrutinizes Legality of Kalshi's Sports-Based Prediction Markets. A federal court has denied Kalshi's request to enjoin Ohio regulators from enforcing state gambling laws.
📸 Daily Market Snapshot: Crypto markets held relatively steady amid a relatively quiet day for Wall Street after yesterday's oil market mayhem. BTC spent much of the day above $70K, but was trending back below the marker in evening trading. | Prices as of 5pm ET | 24hr | 7d |  | Crypto $2.38T | ↗ 1.1% | ↗ 2.9% |  | BTC $69,793 | ↗ 1.3% | ↗ 2.6% |  | ETH $2,033 | ↗ 0.3% | ↗ 3.4% |
. . . NEWS ANALYSIS The Banking Turf War Begins The big banks are done playing nice with crypto. They've been blocking key market structure legislation, and now they’re threatening to sue. At the center of the latest fight is a simple question: who gets to be a bank? According to a new report in The Guardian, the Bank Policy Institute (BPI) is now weighing legal action against the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). BPI represents the country's largest banks, including JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup, and their latest complaint is that the OCC has begun handing crypto and fintech firms a fast lane to national bank trust charters. From the BPI's perspective, allowing crypto companies to offer bank-like services without being regulated exactly like traditional banks could begin to blur long-standing boundaries around the banking system. But the action would put top banking leaders (BPI’s board includes Jamie Dimon, Brian Moynihan, and David Solomon) in direct opposition with the Trump administration, which has made opening the gates to the crypto industry one of its central priorities. And there are some especially awkward political realities to this specific fight – the Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, has itself recently applied for an OCC national trust bank charter, meaning a lawsuit could end up challenging policy poised to directly benefit the president. The OCC Opens the GateBPI argues that letting fintech and crypto firms operate under lighter rules “blurs the statutory boundary” of what it means to be a bank and could raise systemic risk for Americans across the board. That’s the official argument, at least. Beneath it is a more basic concern: crypto firms are beginning to creep into territory that banks once controlled almost exclusively. A national trust charter allows a company to operate across all 50 states and plug directly into the financial system. For decades, that level of access was tightly managed by regulators and largely dominated by large banks. The tide is turning. Back in December, the OCC issued conditional approvals for national trust bank charters to BitGo, Circle, Fidelity Digital Assets, Paxos, and Ripple. This came months after BPI publicly urged the OCC to reject charter applications from crypto and fintech firms. It's also not just the OCC that's shifting gears. This week, Kraken was the first crypto-native firm to be awarded a Fed Master Account, an action which further increases its independence and solidifies its legitimacy. And just last week, President Trump publicly criticized major banks for slowing progress on the Clarity Act over stablecoin yield. The Political Clock Is TickingBanks are responding to the sea change in a familiar manner: litigation. BPI has sued federal regulators before and forced concessions. If it follows through with a case against the OCC, it would mark another serious escalation in the long-running turf war between traditional finance and crypto. Even so, a lawsuit would not necessarily derail existing crypto legislation. Courts and Congress operate on separate tracks. The more realistic risk is spillover. If the banking lobby pushes the conflict hard enough, it could make lawmakers more cautious about advancing crypto bills. Despite the brewing fight, Polymarket bettors still put the odds of the Clarity Act passing this year at around 69%. Whether BPI files the lawsuit or not, this broader pressure isn’t going away. Crypto companies are moving closer to the core plumbing of the financial system, and banks are realizing the moat they relied on for decades may not hold the way it used to. FRIEND & SPONSOR: MERCURYO If you're building in crypto, your users need a way in — and a way out. Mercuryo's on- and off-ramp infrastructure is trusted by leading wallets and platforms to move money fiat to crypto and back in seconds. White-label ready, globally licensed, and built for scale. | 
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