Crypto exchange JPEX has reportedly increased its withdrawal fee to up to 999 Tether (USDT) after receiving a warning from Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC). The staff of the exchange has also been reportedly missing from its Token 2049 booth in Singapore.
On Sept. 13, the SFC, Hong Kong’s crypto watchdog, issued a warning against JPEX for actively promoting its services to the Hong Kong public despite not being licensed or applying for a license to operate in their jurisdiction. According to the SFC, JPEX has marketed itself on its website as a licensed and recognized platform despite being unregulated.
According to the SFC, they’ve already notified the relevant opinion leaders and over-the-counter stores of their suspicions about the exchange and asked them to cease promoting the exchange’s services.
Following the SFC’s warnings, reports of JPEX increasing its withdrawal fees to up to 999 USDT have started to circulate online. The move is seemingly to discourage users from withdrawing their funds from the exchange.
Another scam exchange causing thousands of victims losing their savings.
JPEX is a small crypto exchange in Hong Kong that’s been offering nearly 30% APY on stablecoin staking.
They also have a exchange token $JPEX with $200 billion fully diluted value, advertising on Hong… pic.twitter.com/vns0QnMOpn
Apart from this, community members who attended the Token 2049 event held in Singapore have reported that JPEX’s booth has been abandoned after the warning from the Hong Kong regulator.
The Platinum sponsor, JPEX, abandoned their booth at #Token2049 on the second day.
Some members of the community criticized the event for allowing the exchange to market itself as a sponsor of Token 2049, which is one of the biggest crypto events in the country.
A US court is once again being asked to weigh in on maximal extractable value practices after a judge allowed new evidence to be added to a class-action lawsuit tied to a memecoin platform.
The judge granted a motion to amend and refile to include new evidence a class-action lawsuit against memecoin launch platform Pump.fun, the maximal extractable value (MEV) infrastructure company Jito Labs, the Solana Foundation, which is the nonprofit organization behind the Solana ecosystem, and others.
The motion said over 5,000 pieces of evidence in the form of internal chat logs were submitted by a “confidential informant” in September that were previously unavailable. The filing said:
“Plaintiffs assert that the logs contain contemporaneous discussions among Pump.fun, Solana Labs, Jito Labs, and others concerning the alleged scheme, and that they materially clarify the enterprise’s management, coordination, and communications.”
The first page of the motion to amend the case to include new evidence, which was granted. Source: Burwick Law
Maximal extractable value is a technique that involves reordering transactions within a block to maximize profit for MEV arbitrageurs and validators.
The plaintiffs allege that Pump.fun used MEV techniques to give insiders preferential access to new tokens at a low value, which were then pumped and dumped onto retail participants, who were used as exit liquidity by insiders.
Cointelegraph reached out to Burwick Law, the legal firm representing the plaintiffs, as well as Pump.fun, Jito Labs and the Solana Foundation, but did not receive any responses by the time of publication.
The allegations in the original lawsuit filing. Source: Burwick Law
The lawsuit could set a precedent for MEV cases in the United States, as the ethics of the practice continue to be debated within the crypto industry and legal bodies struggle to define proper regulations about the highly technical subject.
Anton and James Peraire-Bueno, the brothers accused of using a MEV trading bot to make millions of dollars in profit, went to trial in November in the US.
Prosecutors argued that the brothers tricked victims out of their funds, but defense attorneys said that they were executing a legitimate trading strategy and did not do anything illegal.
The jury struggled to reach a verdict in the case, and several jurors requested additional information to clarify the complexities surrounding the technical specifics of blockchain technology.
The case ended in a mistrial after the jury was deadlocked and failed to reach a verdict, highlighting the complexity of adjudicating legal disputes surrounding the application of nascent financial technology.
Reports a female MSP had a secret recording device planted in her office by a member of her own staff are “completely and utterly unacceptable”, SNP leader John Swinney has said.
Scottish parliament officials are investigating the alleged bugging incident by a man, which is said to have taken place in 2023 at Holyrood.
The Scotsman newspaper reported the staffer is still involved with the SNP and moved on to work with a male MP after the issue came to light.
Sky News has yet to independently verify the details, but one senior party source with knowledge of events has said it is “100% true”.
The source alleges “the SNP did nothing; indeed he simply got moved and continued to be promoted by very senior members of executive”.
It is suggested the female MSP, who has not been publicly named, is liked, rated and respected by her colleagues.
Image: The Scottish parliament building in Edinburgh. Pic: PA
First Minister Mr Swinney was stopped by reporters in Edinburgh on Thursday where he said he was “not familiar with all of the details… but that type of conduct is completely and utterly unacceptable”.
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“Individuals are entitled to operate in an open and transparent environment that shouldn’t be subjected to that kind of behaviour,” he concluded.
MPs and MSPs employ staff directly, rather than the political party.
Sky sources confirmed the victims of the incident had to get counselling in the aftermath before suggesting the SNP “definitely has a woman problem”.
The source claims it is “not a one-off incident”, adding: “Women are habitually treated differently.”
An SNP spokesperson said: “The SNP has no involvement in the employment processes of parliamentarians. That is a confidential matter between elected members, employees, and Scottish parliament authorities.
“The reports outline a very traumatic situation for those involved and nobody should ever have to experience fear or harassment for doing their job.”
Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie said: “These jaw-dropping revelations pose serious questions for the SNP top brass.
“It appears a grave breach of privacy and potentially criminal behaviour has been swept under the carpet by the SNP.
“Once again it looks like the SNP chose to close ranks and protect their own, rather than dealing with serious misconduct head-on.”
A spokesperson for the Scottish parliament said: “Each MSP is an employer in their own right and is responsible for managing staff welfare issues and employment disputes.
“Complaints about staff conduct are investigated by an independent adviser, and it is for the member to act on their findings accordingly.
“As a matter of standard practice, we do not comment upon or confirm any individual cases.”
Major US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is expanding payment options in Poland by integrating with one of the country’s most widely used mobile payment systems.
Coinbase has partnered with European payment processor PPro to enable payments via Blik, a popular Polish mobile payment network with nearly 20 million users.
The announcement was made by Coinbase executive and NFT Paris co-founder Côme Prost, who joined the exchange in February 2024 to lead its French operations.
“Improving local payment rails is a key focus for us,” Prost said in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday, highlighting the importance of simple, fast and familiar payment options in driving crypto adoption.
Coinbase holds MiCA licence as Poland struggles to pass crypto bill
Coinbase’s local expansion comes as Poland struggles to pass cryptocurrency legislation amid political divisions. Last week, the Polish government reintroduced an identical version of a strict crypto bill that had been vetoed by President Karol Nawrocki just weeks earlier.
“It has been a pleasure working with the team at Coinbase to launch Blik on their platform to enable Polish customers to access Crypto,” PPro executive Tom Benson wrote in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.
He added that he was confident the partnership with Coinbase would deepen in 2026 as the company adds more local payment methods and expands collaboration across additional areas.
Poland’s crypto adoption booming despite lagging local regulation
Crypto adoption in Poland has surged despite slow-moving local legislation, with the country emerging as one of the leaders in Chainalysis’ 2025 European Crypto Adoption report.
Poland is the only EU member state without a functioning national legal framework to enforce the MiCA regulation, even though the framework applies even without formal implementation.
Poland ranks eighth in Europe by total crypto received, according to Chainalysis’ 2025 European Crypto Adoption report. Source: Chainalysis
Following the president’s veto of the government’s bill, Poland is indeed the only EU member state without any step toward implementation,” Juan Ignacio Ibañez, a member of the Technical Committee of the MiCA Crypto Alliance, told Cointelegraph recently.
“Not every country has a single implementation law,” he added, pointing to Germany and France, which have specific laws, while other member states, such as Spain and Luxembourg, rely on amendments to existing financial legislation.
Ibañez noted, however, that a lag in implementation does not mean all countries are equally advanced, nor does it imply that Poland is more hostile to crypto. Hungary, for example, has implemented MiCA with additional regulations that are “more unfriendly to crypto asset service providers than Poland,” he added.