There are weeks when the crypto news all seems to descend from the same theme. This is one of them: from the benches of the French National Assembly to the OCC’s report on the big American banks, by way of the CFTC’s “plan B”, the common thread is a single one — who writes the rules, and with how much room to manoeuvre.

France: it passes by one vote

The National Assembly adopted amendment I-3898, which closes the tax deferral on swaps from crypto into stablecoins qualifying as e-money tokens under MiCA. The rate is France’s flat tax on gains from crypto-assets, 31.4%, proposed to apply from 1 January 2027. The vote passed 38 to 37, with 25 abstentions: out of 577 deputies, only 100 took part. The text is not law — it still has to face the Senate, which could amend or kill it, and the government has declared itself opposed. It is a signal more than a statute, but a strong signal: the argument is that anyone converting bitcoin into a stablecoin is in fact monetising, and that the tax deferral is a hole that needs closing.

OCC: a hundred thousand complaints and an uncomfortable verdict

The OCC’s report on the nine largest US national institutions describes “reputation risk” policies with no objective standards, capable of penalising customers over political or religious views, or over lawful business activity. The review covers the period 2020 to September 2025, nearly 100,000 complaints and roughly 420,000 pages of documents; crypto-assets appear among the sectors affected. Comptroller Jonathan Gould spoke of “conclusive evidence”. The uncomfortable part deserves careful reading, though: the OCC admits it cannot quantify the phenomenon and that many of the cases examined do not prove a political motive. The report documents opaque practices, not a coordinated campaign against crypto.

Regulators at work, markets adapting

Without the CLARITY Act, voted down in the Senate in September, the CFTC has put its “plan B” on the table: Michael Passalacqua, head of the Innovation Task Force, explained that the agency had prepared two scenarios and has activated the reserve one, with a regulatory framework for leveraged retail exchanges. The SEC, for its part, talks of enforcement that wants to be “credible, visible and vigorous” but not “innovation-crushing”.

On the infrastructure side, two moves show where the market is heading. Charles Schwab has completed the rollout of Schwab Crypto: about 40 million clients can buy Bitcoin and Ether directly in their own account, with a 0.75% fee and Paxos as sub-custodian — outside the traditional SIPC and FDIC protections. And OKXICE, the joint venture between OKX and the owner of the NYSE, has taken on board the objections of nine companies — CoreWeave, Broadcom, Verizon, UnitedHealth and others — to the tokenised trading of their own shares under the SEC exemption of 17 September: a 30-day silence counts as consent, and anyone who does not want to end up in a 24/7 market has to say so in writing.

Tokenisation no longer arrives as ideology, but as infrastructure to be negotiated clause by clause. That nine large companies spent time saying “no” is proof that the negotiation has only just begun.

Verified sources: news.bitcoin.com, “French Assembly Narrowly Adopts Stablecoin Swap Tax Proposal” (17/10/2026); TokenPost, “France Assembly Backs Proposal to End Tax Deferral” (17/10/2026); CNBC, OCC report on debanking (14/10/2026); Yahoo Finance, “Operation Choke Point 2.0” (15/10/2026); CoinDesk, The Policy Protocol on the CFTC and plan B (17/10/2026); The Block, objections to OKXICE (17/10/2026); Cryptopolitan and TechTimes, Schwab Crypto rollout (13/08 and 16/10/2026) — consulted on 18/10/2026.