At the beginning of July 2026, three seemingly unrelated pieces of news outlined a crossroads in the crypto world with extraordinary clarity: on one end, the Financial Market Committee of the Russian State Duma approved the final version of the national regulatory bill for cryptocurrencies, canceling the mandatory reporting of all wallet addresses, shifting to reporting balances and transaction records, with the chairman Anatoly Aksakov explaining this shift as “seeking a more reasonable boundary between anti-money laundering and privacy protection.” For the first time, it also explicitly permitted the legitimate purchase of securities and digital financial assets with crypto assets, incorporating some uses of on-chain holdings into the licensed system; on the other end, the on-chain prediction market platform Predict.fun announced the launch of an institutional-level bulk trading feature aimed at users making single trades of over 100,000 shares, offering zero fees and zero slippage for the first 14 days, supported by traditional market-making institution SIG, yet deliberately pressed the quant data disclosure button, as if testing whether institutional funds are willing to truly enter the on-chain order book; further away, Kraken publicly sought to obtain a full banking license in Europe, particularly in Lithuania, attempting to let the exchange directly enter the EU banking system under the regulatory blueprint already established by Revolut in 2018. Privacy and regulation began to converse in the text, on-chain products and licensed finance accelerated their convergence in function and licensing, but whether Russia's institutional design or the product and path explorations of Predict.fun and Kraken remain in the experimental phase, whether these attempts will ultimately push the crypto industry toward deeper integration or a more complex game layout, is still pending clearer answers from time.
New Russian Regulation: Report Transaction Records, Not Addresses
In this final version pushed by the Financial Market Committee to the second reading in July this year, the most critical modification was changing “report addresses” to “report transaction records.” The original design required residents to mandatorily report all their held crypto wallet addresses to the regulators, which meant that once the information was centralized in the hands of the state, any on-chain transaction could be precisely traced back to an individual. The current text removed this requirement and changed it to only needing to report the balances and transaction records of cryptocurrency assets for regulatory and anti-money laundering purposes, shifting the regulatory perspective from a list of addresses to the overall status of accounts and the trajectory of capital movement.
This rewrite essentially seeks a middle ground between the needs of anti-money laundering and residents' privacy. Financial Market Committee Chairman Anatoly Aksakov has publicly stated the adjustment's rationale quite directly — to protect residents from the risk of sensitive information disclosure. The regulatory authorities can still access key indicators such as the scale of funds and transaction frequencies and can screen suspicious activities based on this when necessary, but the daily institutional layer no longer requires citizens to disclose every single on-chain address, reducing the density of fully integrating decentralized assets into a “real-name mapping.” In the same legislative framework, the clause allowing the legal purchase of securities and digital financial assets with cryptocurrencies has quietly opened another door: when crypto assets can be directly exchanged for regulated financial products within the licensed framework, they are no longer merely “on-chain property,” but are embedded into a part of Russia’s formal financial system. This compromise design of “reporting transaction records, not addresses” thus becomes a regulatory threshold that assets must cross to move from on-chain into the licensed world.
Predict.fun Turns Retail Betting into Institutional Seats
On the other end, the on-chain prediction platform has begun actively reserving seats for institutions. Previously, Predict.fun resembled a small betting table for retail investors, mainly involving small individual participations, but now it has announced the launch of a “bulk trading” feature aimed at users making single trades of over 100,000 shares, directly blocking ordinary participants at the threshold. The official site offers zero fees and zero slippage promises for the first 14 days of bulk trading, inviting traditional top market-making institution SIG for support, while using incentives to bring large funds to the table, with the threshold of “single trades of 100,000 shares” designed as an exclusive entry point for institutions and a few large whales, attempting to fill the gap in the on-chain prediction market's bulk trading capability.
The involvement of SIG means that this prediction market, originally dominated by retail emotions, is beginning to self-impose standards of depth and liquidity according to traditional finance's criteria — the promise of zero slippage essentially relies on market makers taking over on the backend, breaking up large orders to be absorbed into larger order books. Symbolically, this marks the first systematic presence of traditional market makers at the forefront of the on-chain prediction market, but currently, the officials have not disclosed relevant details regarding actual trading volumes or institutional participation. How many institutions are willing to place real risk exposure on on-chain contracts remains unknown. A foreseeable path is that market-making institutions will first test the waters to provide depth, then see if hedge funds or trading companies treat the prediction market as a tool for playing the policies, regulations, and macro events; retail investors will continue to contribute themes and emotions, while institutions refine pricing and arbitrage to “correct” odds closer to the risk-reward ratio of professional financial products, suggesting that the shift of the on-chain prediction market from retail domination to institutional participation will likely slowly complete within such trading thresholds and market-making strategies.
Kraken Races for a Lithuanian Banking License
While the prediction market opens up to institutional exposure, the “established players” in the exchange are also beginning to approach the traditional financial system through licensing entry points. Kraken has publicly listed obtaining a full banking license in Europe as a next-stage goal, prioritizing securing Lithuania, which is viewed as relatively friendly to fintech and crypto businesses. If things proceed smoothly, it will enter the EU banking system in a regulatory sense and have the opportunity to become the only crypto exchange with a complete European banking license; however, to date, there has been no visible information on the submission of a formal application or approval progress, leaving the actual progress in an information vacuum.
The reason Lithuania is chosen by Kraken is not accidental. As early as 2018, fintech company Revolut upgraded itself from a “payment app” to a licensed institution capable of providing banking services across Europe by obtaining a specialized European banking license issued by Lithuania, providing a regulatory path and technical standard for later followers. If Kraken replicates this route and eventually obtains a license, theoretically it can provide traditional banking services such as deposits and loans directly within the EU, while reducing its reliance on third-party cooperating banks, allowing fiat capital inflows and outflows, custody, and compliance audits to be more self-contained within its own system. This will gradually transform the exchange's role from relying on banks to cooperating with licensed financial institutions, significantly altering its power structure and competitive position with traditional finance.
Regulatory Loosening and Licensing: The Path to Integration for Crypto
If Europe is pulling the on-chain world “in” with licenses, Russia seems to be shifting a bit of space within the existing regulatory framework. The final version of the legislation removes the requirement for residents to surrender all wallet addresses, changing it to only declaring balances and transaction records, with the Committee Chairman explicitly emphasizing that this is to reduce the risk of sensitive information misuse — within the context of highly traceable on-chain, this is a compromise with privacy-friendly tendencies. Simultaneously, allowing the legal purchase of securities and digital financial assets with crypto assets brings tools previously outside the system into the existing financial market’s account and product logic, with Russia choosing to integrate crypto “into” the capital market rather than simply severing or fully incorporating it into the licensed regime.
The European path has chosen another route: first issuing licenses to institutions, then extending crypto business along the licensing framework. In 2018, Revolut obtained a professional banking license from Lithuania, using it as a springboard to provide banking services across the EU; now Kraken is attempting to replicate this path, directly knocking on the door for a full banking license. On one side, regulators redefine “visible on-chain assets” with privacy and reporting boundaries, while on the other side, exchanges and fintech companies attempt to eliminate the institutional gap between crypto and traditional finance through banking identities. At the same time, the on-chain product side is also making corresponding explorations: Predict.fun launched a bulk trading function that only accepts orders of more than 100,000 shares, offering the first 14 days with no fees and no slippage, supported by traditional market-making institution SIG, clearly establishing a threshold for institutional-grade “compliant large orders” in the prediction market. Three threads emerged synchronously around July 2026, looking like a collaborative experiment from regulatory terms to product design, but in the absence of clear on-chain usage data and financial behavior indicators, they currently represent more of a preview at the institutional and business model levels and are insufficient to truly reshape the structure and dominant forces of the crypto market in the short term.
Next Step Observation: Bill Implementation and Institutional Adoption
What deserves close attention next is the extent to which these three cues translate from “document and product release” to “verifiable behavior.” In Russia, the bill remains at the pre-second reading phase; whether subsequent second and third readings will continue to adjust reporting criteria directly affects implementation difficulty; the real key lies in how the details are set post-implementation regarding the reporting thresholds for balances and transaction records, and whether regulators are willing to publicly disclose the scale of actual reporting by residents and whether institutions are using crypto to purchase securities, forming a verifiable reference against on-chain paths. For Predict.fun, while the bulk trading function has just launched, the zero-fee and zero-slippage promotion window for the first 14 days is primarily for marketing, more worth observing is whether there will be publicly available daily usage metrics post-promotion, the proportion of orders over 100,000 shares, the makeup of institutional users, and whether products will iteratively adjust matching rules or integrate more market-making structures, thereby leaving clearer usage trajectories of an “institutional prediction market” on-chain. As for Kraken, it will depend on when the timeline and requirements for license approval under the Lithuanian regulatory system are clarified, and once approved, how it delineates the boundaries of exchange, custody, and payment in its European banking business layout, and whether it will shift some funds reliance from collaborating banks to its own licensed framework through new account systems and address management methods. In the coming months, whether these can transform into disclosable data, clear approval progress, and traceable on-chain behavior will determine whether this round of regulatory adjustments and institutional attempts remain at the narrative level or begin to have a lasting impact on the actual structure of the crypto industry.
Join our community, let’s discuss and become stronger together!
Exclusive Hyperliquid benefits for AiCoin: https://app.hyperliquid.xyz/join/AICOIN88
Exclusive Aster benefits for AiCoin: https://www.asterdex.com/zh-CN/referral/9C50e2
On-chain Telegram community: https://t.me/AiCoinWhaleData
On-chain community: https://www.aicoin.com/link/chat?cid=N6OVMor5g
AiCoin on-chain Twitter: https://x.com/aicoinwhaledata
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
