Trump Pauses AI Order, US Freezes $500M of Iran Crypto, Kraken Wins Dubai License

Crypto News President Donald Trump told reporters Thursday he postponed the signing of an artificial intelligence executive order, citing concerns that several provisions could blunt the country's competitive edge against China. The shelved draft would have established a voluntary review framework granting the federal government early access to advanced models prior to public release, alongside a parallel channel for critical infrastructure operators and a cybersecurity component focused on vulnerability discovery. Trump declined to identify which clauses he objected to. The pause arrives as defense and intelligence agencies deepen partnerships with frontier labs, and as policymakers weigh how aggressive oversight could intersect with the wider blockchain and AI infrastructure build-out underway across the United States. The US Treasury has escalated Operation Economic Fury, freezing close to $500 million in digital assets tied to Iran's military and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Secretary Scott Bessent disclosed the running total last week, anchored by a $344 million USDT seizure on the Tron network executed in coordination with Tether. Threat-intelligence estimates now place Tehran's total crypto exposure near $7.7 billion, a figure that would rank the regime among the largest sovereign holders globally. Officials say the program targets shadow banking networks routing oil revenue through stablecoins, with Bitcoin increasingly cited as a parallel rail for sanctioned actors seeking to bypass traditional correspondent banking channels. Blockchain.com confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, signalling intent to pursue a US initial public offering as digital asset firms return to equity markets. The wallet and trading provider, founded in 2011, says it serves more than 95 million wallets and 43 million verified users, and has processed in excess of $1.1 trillion in lifetime crypto transactions. Pricing and share count remain undetermined and the offering is subject to market conditions and regulatory review. The filing follows a recent push into African markets and the rollout of perpetual futures inside its self-custodial wallet via the Hyperliquid protocol, broadening its institutional and retail product surface. Crypto super-app builder ChangeNOW used Consensus 2026 in Miami Beach to detail its expansion from swaps into payments, prediction markets and sports betting, positioning the company as a one-stop financial platform. The group's stack now spans NOWPayments, a gateway serving retail and iGaming operators, the non-custodial NOW Wallet, and NOWNodes, a scalable blockchain node and API service used by enterprise and Web3 teams. Executives flagged the US Clarity Act's progress as a potential catalyst for stablecoin adoption, while highlighting the operational complexity of running across North America, Europe and a fast-growing APAC footprint, each with distinct licensing and tax obligations. Payward, the parent of exchange Kraken, secured preliminary broker-dealer and investment management authorization from Dubai's Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority, opening the door to a full retail and institutional rollout in the emirate. Approved services will include spot and margin trading, over-the-counter desks, staking, transfers and access to Kraken Prime, with UAE clients funding and withdrawing in dirhams via locally regulated subsidiary Payward FZCO. Derivatives, lending and additional qualified-investor products are slated to follow. Co-chief executive Arjun Sethi framed the license as critical to operating inside a supervised perimeter, joining Binance, Crypto.com and OKX under one of the world's most comprehensive crypto regimes for an altcoin-heavy market. A Bubblemaps investigation has flagged roughly 80 high-conviction wagers on Polymarket that hit a 98 percent win rate, with the firm's chief executive Nicolas Vaiman arguing that the cluster is statistically implausible. The probes centred on bets placed days before the Feb. 28 US strikes on Iran, the removal of its supreme leader and a subsequent ceasefire announcement, with nine connected accounts allegedly netting more than $2.4 million by stacking exposure across multiple dated outcomes. Smaller losing tickets, placed days earlier, may have been used to mask coordinated activity. Lawmakers are now weighing restrictions, warning that crypto prediction markets could leak sensitive operational signals to foreign adversaries monitoring on-chain flows. Across the past 24 hours, the dominant narrative cutting through these stories is regulatory consolidation: governments are simultaneously tightening enforcement, licensing operators inside formal perimeters and probing the national-security tail risks of permissionless markets. Sanctions, IPO disclosure regimes, VARA-style frameworks and prediction-market scrutiny all point to the same arc — crypto is being absorbed into the policy stack rather than left outside it. For investors and builders, the practical read is that DeFi products, stablecoin rails and emerging super-apps will increasingly compete on jurisdictional clarity, not just liquidity, while geopolitical risk premiums embedded in bull market pricing remain elevated.