Sanctions Bite, Aptos Pops, CME Goes 24/7

Welcome to our Crypto news in 10, a daily podcast bringing you the latest news about crypto in under 10 minutes.

Here's what's moving crypto on Sunday, May 24, 2026.

A hard EU cutoff for Russia-linked crypto activity just went live. Aptos posted a weekend throughput record. Uniswap governance opened a fresh vote to expand its fee-and-burn system. A major law firm will pay 54 million dollars tied to FTX litigation. And CME is about to switch on round-the-clock crypto futures. Let's get into it.

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Story one. The European Union's 20th sanctions package formally bites today — and it's the bloc's most crypto-specific move yet.

It imposes a sector-wide ban on transactions with Russia-based crypto asset service providers — including decentralized platforms — shifting from listing individual entities to sealing the entire perimeter.

Two state-linked instruments are singled out: RUBx, a ruble-pegged stablecoin, and Russia's digital ruble CBDC.

The package also bans netting arrangements that mask counterparties, and it mirrors similar measures for Belarus through February 2027.

For compliance teams across the EU, screening now extends beyond named wallets to whole settlement ecosystems and high-risk corridors. That's a big operational change... and it starts today, May 24.

Why it matters: sanctioned value flows have been moving onto bespoke rails. By cutting off the rails themselves — and prohibiting instruments like RUBx — the EU is betting a structural ban will be more durable than whack-a-mole listings. For projects, exchanges, and OTC desks with any EU nexus, today is a clear line in the sand.

Sources include Chainalysis research and EU reporting on the effective date.

Story two. A weekend performance splash from Aptos.

The Layer-1 chain posted roughly 115 million transactions on May 24 and hit an all-time peak throughput of 1,078 transactions per second.

Activity jumped from under a million daily transactions on May 21, to 16 million on May 22, then 97 million on May 23.

Aptos briefly out-processed Solana's 32 million that day, with Sui and Near rounding out the top cohort.

Some analysts caution that bots can inflate headline counts — but the on-chain data still shows a clear utilization surge.

Sources include The Defiant, Aptoscan, and comparative dashboards.

Context: higher baseline throughput invites real apps — payments, gaming, intents — but sustaining it matters more than one-off bursts. If fees, finality, and reliability hold while activity persists, that's when TVL, developer momentum, and liquidity tend to follow.

Story three. Uniswap governance is moving again — on a Sunday.

A new on-chain proposal titled Protocol Fee Expansion: Vote 3 opens today to extend Uniswap's fee collection and UNI buyback-and-burn to BNB Chain and Polygon, while completing an earlier, misconfigured activation on Celo.

Under the spec, v2 fees route to each chain's TokenJar. v3 fee ownership points to the V3OpenFeeAdapter. And Celo's cross-chain governance path gets fixed. UNI burned off-chain is bridged back and sent to the mainnet burn address.

The proposal uses the UNIfication fast track — a five-day Snapshot followed by on-chain execution.

Sources include the Uniswap Foundation's live proposal page and the governance forum temp-check.

Why it matters: since late 2025, Uniswap has been phasing in protocol fees across chains and tying value to UNI via burns. Expanding to BNB Chain and Polygon — and fixing Celo — widens the revenue perimeter and tests cross-chain operations, while slightly trimming LP take rates where fees are active. The goal is to make Uniswap's multi-chain footprint accretive to UNI holders without adding front-end fees.

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Story four. The FTX legal aftershocks keep rippling.

Fenwick & West — the Silicon Valley firm that advised FTX US before the collapse — agreed to pay 54 million dollars to settle customer claims that it helped enable fraud, according to court filings reported late this week.

The deal doesn't resolve all third-party litigation, but it's one of the largest public payouts by an outside advisor in the FTX matter — and it underscores the liability risk for service providers around failed crypto platforms.

Sources include Reuters and follow-on coverage.

Story five. CME Group is taking crypto derivatives trading 24/7 starting Friday, May 29, pending final regulatory sign-off — eliminating the notorious Friday-to-Sunday CME gap.

After the cutover, bitcoin and ether futures and options will trade continuously, with only a short maintenance window on weekends.

CME says the change lets institutions hedge weekend risk in regulated markets. The CFTC chair has even called nonstop crypto markets a 'no-brainer' compared with, say, corn or wheat.

Sources include Decrypt's reporting on CME's timing and mechanics.

Why it matters: crypto trades 24/7 everywhere else. Aligning listed derivatives with spot means fewer gaps to arbitrage on Mondays, cleaner basis signals, and more professional risk management for miners, treasuries, and funds. It also nudges traditional markets toward their own after-hours evolution.

Quick recap...

Today's EU sanctions pivot is a structural ban on Russia-linked crypto rails — compliance teams, that clock started this morning.

Aptos just posted a weekend throughput record, while Uniswap governance opened a fresh vote to expand its fee-and-burn footprint to BNB Chain, Polygon, and Celo.

In the courts, Fenwick's 54 million dollar FTX deal puts advisors on notice.

And by Friday, CME's crypto futures should be trading nonstop, shrinking those weekend gaps... Stay safe out there, and I'll see you tomorrow.

Thanks for listening and see you tommorow!