Donald Trump posted a surprise ceasefire announcement on Truth Social at 6:32 PM ET Tuesday, roughly ninety minutes before his own deadline to strike Iranian infrastructure. Trump declared a two-week suspension of attacks, conditional on Iran immediately reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and cited a ten-point Iranian proposal as a workable basis for negotiations. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council formally accepted the terms, and Israel also agreed, according to two White House officials who spoke to Reuters. The announcement reversed a market selloff that had begun earlier that morning after Trump posted a separate threat warning that “whole civilization will die tonight.”
Financial markets responded immediately. Bitcoin climbed from below $68,000 to $72,700 following the news, while oil prices fell more than 20%. US stock futures rose broadly, with the Nasdaq gaining 3.5% and the Dow adding over 1,000 points. Analysts had previously identified a confirmed Hormuz reopening as the single catalyst most capable of pushing Bitcoin above $90,000. While two weeks falls well short of a lasting peace, a sustained opening of the strait could ease oil prices and give the Federal Reserve the policy flexibility markets have been seeking since late February.
On the regulatory front, the FDIC released a proposed rulemaking framework under the GENIUS Act on Tuesday, outlining how FDIC-supervised banks may issue payment stablecoins through subsidiaries. The framework addresses reserve standards, mandatory redemption at par, liquidity controls, audits, and custody requirements. Critically, stablecoins issued under this structure are explicitly excluded from FDIC deposit insurance, meaning a stablecoin run would not receive the same government backstop as a traditional bank deposit. The IMF had flagged this distinction the previous day, noting that stablecoins behave more like money market funds than deposits, and the new framework now makes that classification official.
The SEC approved the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust on Tuesday, with the fund set to begin trading on NYSE Arca under the ticker MSBT on Wednesday morning. The fund carries a management fee of 0.14%, the lowest of any spot Bitcoin ETF currently trading. By comparison, BlackRock‘s IBIT and Fidelity‘s FBTC each charge 0.25%. Morgan Stanley employs approximately 16,000 financial advisors, and the firm’s Global Investment Committee had already recommended allocating up to 4% of client portfolios to crypto for opportunistic growth the prior year.
Those advisors now have a Morgan Stanley-branded product available to recommend directly to clients. Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas described the setup as a “captive audience,” highlighting the distribution advantage the firm holds over independent ETF issuers. The combination of the lowest fee in the category and a large, in-house advisory network positions the fund as a notable entrant in the spot Bitcoin ETF market.
SEC Chair Paul Atkins said Tuesday that the Commission is close to releasing a formal regulatory framework he is calling “Reg Crypto,” designed to address fundraising questions specific to digital asset projects. The intent is to create a crypto-native offering regime so that projects are not required to fit within existing exemptions such as Reg A or Reg D, which were not designed with digital assets in mind. Atkins framed this as a significant remaining piece of the broader US crypto regulatory structure.
In a separate legal development, SDNY prosecutors continued their pursuit of Roman Storm, the developer associated with Tornado Cash. US Attorney Jay Clayton filed a response Tuesday to Storm’s motion to dismiss remaining charges ahead of a retrial. Storm’s legal team had cited a March 2026 Supreme Court ruling in Cox Communications v. Sony Music, arguing that if internet service providers cannot be held liable for user conduct based on knowledge alone, software developers should not be either. Clayton rejected the comparison, stating that Storm’s conduct bears no resemblance to the civil copyright dispute at the center of the Cox case, and that the ruling has no relevance to the criminal charges of money laundering and sanctions evasion that Storm faces.
Originally reported by Decrypt.
