Institutional DeFi Adoption Spurs Regulatory Scrutiny Across Continents

Regulation & Policy

• Janus Henderson, the $480 billion asset manager, announced a four-part partnership with Ethena that includes a strategic investment in the ENA governance token and plans to utilize USDe, Ethena's yield-bearing synthetic dollar, for its treasury cash management strategy [39, 43]. Furthermore, the firm is exploring offering USDe to its clients through exchange-traded investment products (ETPs) and will help distribute Janus Henderson’s tokenized funds of collateralized loan obligations (CLO) via this deal [39, 43]. This partnership highlights a major trend of traditional finance firms embracing DeFi infrastructure, following similar moves by BlackRock with Uniswap and Apollo Global Management with Morpho, signaling increased institutional confidence in the Ethena ecosystem [39]. ^[39][43][51]
• The crypto industry is urging Congress to pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (H.R. 3633) and specifically maintain its developer protections, which are crucial for sustaining blockchain innovation in the United States [31]. More than 60 prominent CEOs and founders signed a letter on June 9, calling on Senate leaders to pass the bill while keeping Section 604—the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA)—intact, as they view it as non-negotiable support [31]. The BRCA shields non-controlling software developers from Bank Secrecy Act obligations and federal money transmission prosecution by codifying that those who do not custody or control user funds are not considered money transmitters [31]. Without this provision, signatories argue the broader market structure bill would fail to deliver necessary legal certainty for open-source protocol development [31]. ^[31]
• EU regulators have ordered Meta to restore free access to WhatsApp Business tools for rival AI chatbots, following an antitrust investigation into Meta’s policy shift that restricted the Business API to Meta AI [4]. The European Commission mandated that Meta reinstate access for third-party general-purpose AI assistants under pre-ban terms, a decision which Meta labeled as “regulatory overreach” and vowed to appeal [4]. This order, stemming from an investigation into whether Meta abused its dominant position by blocking competitors since October 2025, carries the threat of fines up to 10% of Meta's total global turnover for non-compliance [4]. ^[4]