Galaxy Digital posted a $216 million net loss in the first quarter of 2026, driven largely by declining crypto prices that weighed on its balance sheet.

CEO Mike Novogratz appeared unfazed, attributing the losses to an industry that is in a transition phase.

“For digital assets, this is a transition year — globally, we’re moving from a speculative asset class, the ‘crypto casino,’ some would call it, to a technology that will be embedded across industries worldwide,” he said on the company’s earnings call.

The crypto market cap slid roughly 21% last quarter, contributing to unrealized losses across Galaxy’s treasury and investments.

Despite this market-wide decline, Galaxy (GLXY) reported flat trading volumes, something Novogratz said marked “the first time we’ve really started to see a decoupling of our business from the price.”

Shares of GLXY were trading around $25.30 on Tuesday, a margional 1% gain on the day according to The Block’s crypto stock data.

Galaxy Digital (GLXY) stock price chart. Source: The Block/TradingView
Data center outlook

Novogratz harped on Galaxy’s growing data center business as being key to offsetting crypto market volatility, saying he remains “bullish on both our data centers and digital assets platforms.”

The firm recently delivered its first data hall at its Helios campus in West Texas under its lease agreement with CoreWeave, which is expected to generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue across the full buildout.

Galaxy Helios expectations. Source: Galaxy Q1 2026 earnings report
Executives see the milestone as a turning point for the business, calling it “the single most important de-risking event this business has experienced.”

Galaxy expects revenue from its data center segment, which it sees as insulated from crypto price swings, to begin ramping in the second quarter.

Rewiring capital markets

Meanwhile, Galaxy’s Digital Assets segment generated $49 million in adjusted gross profit during the bearish quarter, just barely falling short of the $51 million seen the quarter prior.

“If I could see that four quarters in a row, I’d have a big grin on my face,” Novogratz said.

Galaxy also flagged growing institutional demand for blockchain infrastructure, including custody, trading, and tokenization, noting that “the entirety of the capital markets … ultimately needs to be rewired.”

Executives said that over time, the firm’s performance should be less and less tied to crypto price swings and more dependent on usage of its platform.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#GalaxyDigital #Crypto #Bitcoin #DataCenter #AI #Blockchain #Finance #Markets #Investing #Future

Aave service providers put forth a governance proposal on Friday that would contribute 25,000 ETH worth nearly $58 million from the protocol’s DAO to DeFi United, a “coordinated relief effort” to restore backing for rsETH following last week’s Kelp DAO exploit.

The proposed contribution would go toward closing the remaining shortfall from the incident where an attacker minted unbacked rsETH through a compromised LayerZero bridge and used it as collateral on Aave to borrow real assets, leaving the protocol with significant bad debt.

Aave’s proposed contribution joins a stack of donations from ecosystem protocols and individual backers.

On Thursday, Lido DAO and Ether.fi proposed contributions of up to 2,500 ETH and 5,000 ETH, respectively.

Aave’s Senior VP of Engineering, Emilio Frangella, said he would be committing 500 ETH while Stani Kulechov, the protocol’s founder and CEO, is contributing 5,000 ETH, calling Aave his “life’s work.”

Separately, on Friday, Mantle proposed a low-interest credit facility of up to 30,000 ETH to help Aave absorb any remaining bad debt.

Including contributions from Golem, BGD Labs, and individual users, the DeFi United fund stands at roughly 69,534 ETH, or nearly $161 million.

DeFi United fund totals April 24, 2026. Source: DeFi United
Across all proposed contributions and the freezing of roughly 30,700 ETH on Arbitrum following the attack, X user DCF GOD estimates the hole has been filled, assuming all proposals pass. This could potentially reduce the amount that Aave would need to borrow from Mantle.

Data from The Block shows that total value locked on DeFi protocols now sits just above $80 billion, down over 27% from the $110 billion seen at the start of the year.

Expand Chart

Analysts at JPMorgan said that these repeated exploits are weighing down institutional interest in DeFi and causing users to shift funds into stablecoins.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Aave #DeFi #ETH #KelpDAO #Crypto #Hack #DAO #Blockchain #Web3 #Recovery

Tether said it supported the freeze of more than $344 million in USDT across two Tron addresses, confirming an earlier onchain blacklist action that appears to be one of the largest in the company’s history.

The stablecoin issuer said the freeze was carried out in coordination with the Office of Foreign Assets Control and U.S. law enforcement after authorities shared information tied to unlawful conduct.

In a Thursday notice, Tether did not identify the underlying investigation or say when the wallets were first flagged.

Blockchain security firm PeckShield had earlier said two Tron wallets — TNiq9…QZH81 and TTiDL…pjSr9 — were blacklisted on April 23. At the time, neither Tether nor Tron had publicly explained the move.

The two addresses were publicly visible on Tron explorers before the freeze, with one holding about $213 million in USDT and the other roughly $131 million, bringing the total to more than $344 million.

Tether said the action followed information linked to sanctions evasion, criminal networks, or other illicit activity. “USDT is not a safe haven for illicit activity,” CEO Paolo Ardoino said in the company’s statement, adding that Tether moves quickly when it identifies credible links to sanctioned entities or criminal actors.

The freeze is significant in two ways. It is reportedly the biggest one yet by size, and it fits a pattern Tether has leaned into more aggressively since late 2023.

Enforcement trend

The company also used the announcement to highlight its broader enforcement footprint.

Tether said it now works with more than 340 law enforcement agencies across 65 countries, has supported more than 2,300 cases globally, and has frozen more than $4.4 billion in assets overall, including more than $2.1 billion tied to U.S. authorities.

Back in November 2023, the company froze about $225 million in USDT linked to a Southeast Asia human-trafficking and “pig butchering” investigation. In January this year, it froze roughly $182 million across five Tron wallets in what it said was a law-enforcement-linked action.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Tether #USDT #Tron #CryptoSecurity #Blockchain #CryptoNews #Compliance #Sanctions #Web3 #DigitalAssets

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other major cryptocurrencies saw moderate gains early Wednesday, supported by strong exchange-traded fund inflows and easing geopolitical tensions.

According to The Block’s crypto price page, bitcoin rose 2.2% in the past 24 hours to trade at $78,015 as of 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday. Ethereum rose 2.7% to $2,386 in the same period, and the broader crypto market was up 2.3%.

“Crypto’s upside reflects a confluence of easing geopolitics, strong ETF inflows, and constructive positioning,” said Zeus Research Analyst Dominick John. “As Bitcoin broke above $75K, short positions were liquidated, triggering a mechanical squeeze.”

Spot bitcoin ETFs have reported three straight weeks of net inflows, drawing in around $1.8 billion worth of capital. Plus, Michael Saylor-led Strategy has recently purchased additional bitcoin, surpassing BlackRock to become the largest institutional bitcoin holder.

Earlier today, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he will extend the ceasefire with Iran to allow time for negotiations between the two countries, easing concerns over the approaching ceasefire expiry. However, Iran reportedly responded critically, accusing the U.S. for continuing to block Iranian ports.

Meanwhile, K33 Research said that bitcoin is likely to maintain its upward momentum, with a high possibility of more short squeeze events in the near term.

“Funding rates moved further lower over the past week, while prices climbed to three-month highs. Open interest continues to trend with higher highs and higher lows,” the K33 report said. “Gradually rising leverage alongside deeply negative funding rates suggests that short positions are steadily building in perps, increasing both the likelihood and potential magnitude of a short squeeze ahead.”

Expand Chart

Improving sentiment

The easing of risks tied to the ceasefire deadline appears to have bolstered crypto market sentiment. The Fear & Greed Index reflects the improvement, rebounding to 33 — back into “fear” territory — from an “extreme fear” low of 8 at the start of April.

“A Crypto Fear & Greed Index reading of 33 reflects a fear regime, but the uptick signals improving sentiment and a gradual re-risking bias rather than outright bullish euphoria,” John said.

Still, the current rally appears limited to the short term. A shift toward a full-scale bull cycle would require a combination of sustained positive developments across the market., analysts said.

“Bitcoin needs to hold key breakout levels around $78,000 to $83,000, keep spot demand absorbing supply, and see confirmation from stronger liquidity, sustained altcoin participation, and a more stable macro backdrop,” LVRG Research Director Nick Ruck told Crypto Whale Data

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#Bitcoin #BTC #Ethereum #CryptoMarket #Bullish #CryptoNews #ETF #ShortSqueeze #FearAndGreed #CryptoTrading #CryptoWhaleData

Ethereum Name Service gateway eth.limo was briefly hijacked at its domain registrar on Friday evening via a social engineering attack, the project said in a post-mortem published Saturday.

At 7:07 p.m. EDT on April 17, an attacker impersonated an eth.limo team member to trick registrar EasyDNS into running an account recovery process, according to the post-mortem and a separate blog post from EasyDNS CEO Mark Jeftovic.

The attacker flipped eth.limo’s nameservers to Cloudflare at 2:23 a.m. EDT on April 18, triggering automated downtime alerts that woke the eth.limo team. The nameservers were then switched again to Namecheap at 3:57 a.m. EDT before EasyDNS restored the team’s account access at 7:49 a.m. EDT, per the timeline.

eth.limo is a free, open-source reverse proxy that lets users reach ENS-linked content hosted on IPFS, Arweave, or Swarm through a standard browser by appending “.limo” to any .eth name. Its wildcard DNS record at *.eth.limo covers roughly 2 million .eth domains registered through ENS, per figures cited by EasyDNS.

A successful hijack of that wildcard would have let the attacker redirect traffic for any .eth page accessed through the gateway, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s personal blog at vitalik.eth.limo, toward phishing infrastructure.

“On behalf of everyone here, I apologize to the eth.limo team and the wider Ethereum community,” Jeftovic wrote. “ENS has always had a special place in our heart as the first registrar to enable ENS linking to web2 domains and we’ve been involved in the space since 2017.”

DNSSEC as backstop

What prevented that outcome, both teams said, was DNSSEC. The standard cryptographically signs DNS records so that validating resolvers can reject unsigned or incorrectly signed responses.

Because the attacker never obtained eth.limo’s signing keys, the chain of trust broke when resolvers checked the attacker’s new nameserver responses against the legitimate DS record still cached from the parent zone. Resolvers returned SERVFAIL errors rather than the malicious answers, per eth.limo.

“DNSSEC likely reduced the blast radius of the hijack. We are not aware of any user impact at this time,” the eth.limo team wrote.

Buterin, who had warned users on Friday to avoid all eth.limo URLs and pointed them to IPFS directly, confirmed Saturday that the situation was “all resolved now.”

EasyDNS’ mea culpa

In his blog post, titled “We screwed up and we own it,” Jeftovic said the incident marked the first successful social engineering attack against an EasyDNS customer in the firm’s 28-year history, and that no other customers were affected.

Jeftovic said eth.limo will be migrated to Domainsure, an EasyDNS-affiliated service aimed at enterprise and fintech clients that does not offer any account recovery mechanism. He declined to detail exactly how the attacker fooled the support process, citing an ongoing internal post-mortem.

Domain hijackings on the rise

The incident is the latest in a steady run of registrar-level compromises targeting crypto front-ends whose underlying smart contracts are decentralized but whose user-facing domains are not.

In November, DNS hijacks of decentralized exchanges Aerodrome and Velodrome drained more than $700,000 from users after attackers compromised an account at registrar NameSilo and stripped DNSSEC from the affected domains.

Stablecoin-focused protocol Steakhouse Financial disclosed a similar incident on March 30 after OVH support staff were socially engineered into removing two-factor authentication from its account, briefly allowing a wallet drainer to be served from a cloned site. Yield platform Neutrl suffered a similar incident in March as well.

In an ironic turn, eth.limo had provided “whiteglove” support to the Aerodrome team during the November hijack, according to an ENS DAO Q4 2025 update, with its gateway often held up as the decentralized fallback of choice when a DeFi front-end goes dark.

Buterin has long argued that Ethereum’s dependence on centralized DNS resolution is a form of trust backsliding, and in January declared 2026 the year developers should reverse it by pushing users toward direct IPFS access paths. That is the same workaround he pointed to during Friday’s incident, telling followers they could “check my blog via IPFS directly” while the gateway was down.

eth.limo’s service is back online under its original team’s control, according to the project.

https://animalverse.social/community/?activity_search=%23Ethereum

#Ethereum #ENS #ethlimo #CryptoSecurity #DNS #CyberAttack #Web3 #Blockchain #Phishing #CryptoNews

Alcoa is close to handing over the keys at Massena East.

The top US aluminum producer is in advanced discussions to sell the former smelter site, which sits along the St. Lawrence River, to New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), CEO Bill Oplinger told Bloomberg on Friday. Oplinger said a deal “should be done in the middle part of this year,” per the report.

Alcoa has been shopping around 10 shuttered US smelter properties as data center developers and crypto miners scout for large, pre-wired industrial footprints with utility-scale grid access. The Massena East facility draws hydropower from the New York Power Authority and was idled in 2014 after high energy costs and foreign competition dragged on domestic aluminum production.

For NYDIG, buying the site would cement a presence it has been building for more than a year. In October 2024, the Stone Ridge-owned firm took a strategic stake in Coinmint, the colocation host running Bitcoin mining hardware at the 435-megawatt Massena campus under a 10-year lease with Alcoa signed in 2018. That investment preceded a wave of Coinmint hosting client exits, including CleanSpark, Gryphon, and Bit Digital, as NYDIG cleared capacity to run more of its own rigs.

Mintvest Capital, a minority shareholder in Coinmint, alleged in a lawsuit earlier this year that NYDIG had effectively acquired Coinmint for roughly $200 million. (The lawsuit was filed because Mintvest believed it had not been compensated fairly for its share in the company.)

The expected sale extends a growing pattern of retired US smelter sites getting second lives as digital infrastructure. In February, Century Aluminum sold its Hawesville, Kentucky smelter to TeraWulf for $200 million in cash plus a 6.8% minority equity stake in a redevelopment vehicle, with that site earmarked for high-performance computing and AI workloads rather than Bitcoin mining.

NYDIG’s continued push into proof-of-work hashrate cuts against the broader industry drift. Public miners including Riot Platforms, Core Scientific, TeraWulf, and IREN have increasingly redirected power capacity toward AI and high-performance computing as post-halving mining economics tighten. BlackRock’s recent $40 billion Aligned Data Centers buyout valued power sites at roughly $8 million per megawatt, about 160% above typical public miner valuations.

NYDIG, by contrast, has been one of the most active consolidators in Bitcoin mining since the 2022 bear market. The firm acquired Consensus Technology Group’s roughly 120 MW of capacity across North Dakota, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Missouri in late 2024, and in March 2025 announced a definitive agreement to buy Crusoe Energy’s Bitcoin mining business, including more than 270 MW of generation assets, as Crusoe reoriented toward AI infrastructure.

NYDIG did not respond to Bloomberg’s or The Block’s requests for comment.

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#Bitcoin #BTC #Mining #NYDIG #Alcoa #CryptoNews #DataCenter #Energy #Blockchain #Infrastructure

Tron founder Justin Sun said Wednesday the blockchain he helped build is taking steps to head off future technical threats posed by quantum computing.

“When Bitcoin was still debating whether to freeze quantum-vulnerable addresses, and Ethereum was still forming research committees, Tron was already taking action,” Sun said. “Today, we officially announce: Tron launches the post-quantum upgrade plan, becoming the first mainstream public chain to deploy NIST-standard post-quantum signature schemes on its mainnet.”

Sun’s comments follow researchers at Google Quantum AI recently publishing a paper that ignited debate over whether or not it could eventually be possible to break the cryptography that underpins cryptocurrencies.

Essentially, a technological advancement of Shor’s algorithm could potentially reduce the resources needed to crack private keys, allowing quantum computers to defeat modern encryption. Google announced a 2029 target for the migration to post-quantum cryptography (PQC).

As some chose to panic, Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao argued that upgrades to quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms should be able to counter any real-world threats.

“At a high level, all crypto has to do is upgrade,” Zhao said. “So, no need to panic.”

Ethereum researcher Justin Drake has cautioned that the results of the Google publication required additional scrutiny and that timelines for practical attacks are probabilistic, not certain. He estimated there is a small but meaningful chance a quantum computer could break elliptic curve keys by the early 2030s.

“Quantum security shouldn’t be a debate; it should be a feature,” Sun added on Wednesday. “We will ensure that every Tron user’s assets are not at risk due to quantum threats. The technical roadmap will be released soon.”

Over $80 billion worth of stablecoins, primarily USDT, have been issued on Tron, according to The Block Data Dashboard. The blockchain’s total value locked is $5 billion, according to DefiLlama data.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Tron #JustinSun #QuantumComputing #CryptoSecurity #Blockchain #CryptoNews #PostQuantum #Web3 #CyberSecurity #FutureTech

Justin Sun, once World Liberty Financial’s largest outside backer, is now its most prominent public critic. By midday Sunday, the project had punched back.

In a post on X published early Sunday, the Tron founder accused the Trump family-backed DeFi project of building an undisclosed “backdoor blacklisting function” into the smart contract used to deploy WLFI tokens. The function, Sun wrote, gives the company “unilateral power to freeze, restrict, and effectively confiscate the property rights of any token holder, without notice, without cause, and without recourse.”

Sun framed the design as the inverse of what investors were sold, calling it “a trap door marketed as an open door.” He positioned himself as “the first and single largest victim,” pointing to the wallet World Liberty blacklisted in September 2025 after he moved roughly $9 million of WLFI between addresses.

“Every action taken by the WLFI team to extract fees from users, to secretly implant backdoor controls over user assets, to freeze investor funds without disclosure or due process, and to treat the crypto community as a personal ATM — all of these actions are illegitimate and were never authorized by any fair, transparent, or good-faith community governance process,” Sun wrote.

The post marks a sharp escalation. In September, Sun professed innocence and asked the team to unfreeze his tokens, calling the action “unreasonable” but stopping well short of alleging fraud. Sunday’s statement instead accuses the project of secretly embedding admin controls, extracting fees from users, and running governance votes whose “outcomes were predetermined.”

Sun also drew a careful political line, opening the post by reaffirming his support for President Trump and “his crypto friendly policy,” and limiting his attack to the “bad actors at WLFI.” He invested $30 million in the project in late 2024 and was named an advisor, later building his position to roughly $75 million alongside a $100 million commitment to the TRUMP memecoin.

His frozen WLFI stash, estimated by Bubblemaps at roughly 545 million tokens, has lost more than $80 million in value since the freeze, with the bulk of the decline tracking WLFI’s broader downtrend.

World Liberty responds

Hours later on Sunday, World Liberty responded directly on X, writing: “Does anyone still believe @justinsuntron?” The post accused Sun of “playing the victim while making baseless allegations to cover up his own misconduct,” called it a “same playbook, different target,” and claimed the project has “the contracts,” “the evidence,” and “the truth.” It closed with “See you in court pal,” a sign that WLFI is apparently prepared to litigate against its former marquee investor.

“Whoever is hiding behind this official account, step forward and identify yourself,” Sun responded in turn. “As the largest investor in this project, I demand that those responsible come forward by name, instead of hiding in the shadows.”

The timing of Sun’s broadside is pointed. WLFI fell to a record low last week after revelations that the project’s treasury had pledged 5 billion WLFI tokens on Dolomite, a lending protocol whose co-founder Corey Caplan also serves as a WLFI advisor and CTO, to borrow roughly $75 million in USDC and USD1. More than $40 million of those proceeds moved to Coinbase Prime. The position now represents over half of Dolomite’s total supplied assets, and the protocol’s USD1 pool is running near 93% utilization.

World Liberty has dismissed the resulting criticism as “FUD,” saying it is “nowhere near liquidation” and would simply post more collateral if WLFI’s price kept falling. The project also said it would file a governance proposal this week to set a phased unlock schedule for early retail buyers, around 75% of whose tokens remain locked.

World Liberty’s WLFI token currently trades at about $0.08, trading flat over the past day, according to The Block’s World Liberty Financial Price page. The project’s market capitalization is about $2.5 billion, per the data.

Ref:
http://www.paykalken.com
http://www.animalverse.club

#JustinSun #WLFI #DeFi #CryptoDrama #SmartContract #CryptoNews #Blockchain #Web3 #CryptoSecurity #Onchain

The Royal Government of Bhutan has moved another portion of its bitcoin (BTC) reserves, transferring roughly 319.7 BTC ($22.68 million) to two addresses on Thursday, according to onchain data.

Blockchain analysis provider Onchain Lens, citing Arkham data, flagged that Bhutan transferred roughly 250 BTC to a wallet reportedly used to move funds for sale via Galaxy Digital and OKX. Another 69.7 BTC was sent to a new, unmarked address.

Arkham noted in a post on X that the Bhutanese government has moved $215.7 million worth of bitcoin out of its holding addresses so far this year, with $162.6 million transferred to unlabeled wallets.

Following the latest transfers, Bhutan currently holds 3,954 BTC, worth about $280.6 million. At its peak, the country held roughly 13,000 BTC in October 2024. Druk Holding and Investments Ltd., the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, manages the bitcoin assets for the government.

The purpose of the latest transactions remains unclear, though such activities are often tied to potential asset sales. The Block has reached out to Druk Holding for comment.

Bhutan historically built its bitcoin holdings through hydropower-backed mining operations. However, speculation has emerged that the government might have halted mining, as its last bitcoin inflow exceeding $100,000 was recorded over a year ago, according to Arkham.

Bitcoin fell 1.3% over the past 24 hours to trade at $70,859 as of 2:30 a.m. ET Thursday, according to The Block’s price page. The world’s largest cryptocurrency previously reached an all-time high near $124,900 in October 2025.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Bhutan #Bitcoin #BTC #CryptoNews #Onchain #CryptoMarket #Whales #DigitalAssets #CryptoTransfer #MarketWatch

On Monday, the crypto advocacy group sent a response to the SEC, addressing Citadel’s letter in December that argued for stricter oversight over DeFi.

In December, Citadel said that many DeFi protocols meet the definition of an exchange by using non-discretionary methods, such as algorithms, to bring together buyers and sellers.

The firm called for the SEC to take on more of a notice-and-comment rulemaking approach, rather than an exemption, which the regulator is currently considering.

However, the Blockchain Association rejected that position, arguing that DeFi protocol developers are not brokers or dealers and don’t operate an exchange and “cannot be shoehorned into the statutory categories designed for human-operated intermediaries.”

“Blockchain Association respectfully urges the Commission to proceed with the innovation exemption framework that Chairman Atkins has directed staff to develop,” the group said in the letter. “The Commission should grant exemptive relief for tokenized equity trading, precisely as it did for previous financial technology innovations.”

Tokenization push

The letter comes as SEC Chair Paul Atkins has said the agency will soon seek public comment on a range of issues tied to future rulemaking, including a proposed innovation exemption that could function as a regulatory sandbox for onchain assets. Tokenization has gained traction as firms explore moving assets like stocks onto blockchain infrastructure, enabling faster and more efficient trading.

The SEC has greenlit several entities, including Nasdaq, to move forward with tokenized securities, while also asserting that those assets remain securities and must follow securities law.

The Blockchain Association — whose more than 100 members include Coinbase, Circle and Mysten Labs — said securities laws regulate the intermediaries, but not “neutral infrastructure.”

“Validators, autonomous smart contracts, non-custodial software, and other blockchain-based tools do not become regulated middlemen just because they help power upgraded financial rails,” the group said on Monday.

The Blockchain Association also said the SEC has previously relied on exemptions and has the authority to do so.

“The Commission should understand Citadel’s procedural demand for what it is: a strategy of delay,” the group said. “Citadel’s proposal for comprehensive rulemaking would take years. During that time, the benefits of tokenization would remain unavailable to American investors and innovation in the space would relocate to more innovation-friendly jurisdictions offshore.”

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#DeFi #SEC #BlockchainAssociation #Citadel #CryptoRegulation #Tokenization #CryptoNews #Blockchain #Web3 #Finance #DigitalAssets #CryptoPolicy #Innovation #Fintech #WallStreet

HypurrFi alerted users against interacting with its website and lending platform while it investigates a potential domain hijacking.

“Do NOT USE THE HYPURR .FI domain, it is compromised,” HypurrFi founder androolloyd posted to X on Friday.

The team noted there is no current risk to user funds and that its social media channels remain in its control.

“Do not interact with the app until further notice from the team,” HypurrFi said.

HypurrFi is a DeFi lending and borrowing protocol built on HyperEVM, Hyperliquid’s EVM-compatible high-performance blockchain for perps trading.

The platform has about $30 million in total value locked, according to DefiLlama.

Domain hijackings are a relatively common issue in the crypto sector, and particularly pernicious because they can exploit even the most well-audited smart contracts and secure onchain protocols.

Attackers will often take over a project’s frontend website to deploy wallet drainers or inject other malicious code prompts. Last month, for instance, attackers compromised the BONKfun domain.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#HypurrFi #DeFi #CryptoSecurity #DomainHijack #Web3 #CryptoNews #CyberSecurity #Blockchain #DeFiRisk #WalletSafety

The GMCI AI Index recorded a value of 51.26 on Sunday, up 48% since the beginning of February. However, it is worth noting that the index remains 84% below its all-time high from the first quarter of 2024.

The GMAI index comprises nine tokens with extreme top-heaviness, with Bittensor (TAO), Render (RNDR), and Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (ASI) making up over 71% of the index.

Despite being called a crypto AI index, it is more of a measure of the performance of three large-cap AI infrastructure tokens rather than broader AI crypto sentiment. This composition matters for interpreting the March rally, as the price of TAO nearly doubled in March, and combined with its 24.89% weight, contributed the majority of the index’s appreciation.

The rise in the price of TAO is mostly due to the market catching up to a fundamental realization of what the Bittensor network can demonstrably do.

Expand Chart

Bittensor subnet 3’s team announced the Covenant-72B model, a 72-billion-parameter language model trained permissionlessly across more than 70 globally distributed nodes. The model scored 67.1 on MMLU, a popular benchmark for evaluating the capabilities of LLMs, putting it in a competitive range with Meta’s Llama 2 70B.

This showcased the first credible proof that distributed training, which has often been dismissed as too slow and fragmented, can produce models that compete with centralized incumbents. The top subnet token, τemplar (SN3), rallied by over 400% in the last month to a ~$130 million market cap.

This development in the Bittensor ecosystem gained the attention and acknowledgement of notable public figures such as Jensen Huang and Chamath Palihapitiya, which added further narrative fuel to the ecosystem and the TAO token.

The subnet ecosystem beyond Covenant-72B is also maturing, with Targon (SN4), a decentralized GPU compute marketplace operated by Manifold Labs, securing a six-figure deal to power Dippy AI’s backend of 8.6 million users.

At the time of writing, there have been over 10.7 million TAO tokens issued, with over 68% staked. The price of TAO stands at approximately $317, with a market cap of just over $3 billion.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Bittensor #TAO #AITokens #CryptoAI #AI #Blockchain #CryptoNews #DePIN #Web3 #Altcoins

Paradigm is reportedly developing a prediction markets trading terminal, according to anonymous sources in a Fortune report on Wednesday.

Arjun Balaji, a partner at the venture firm, is said to be leading the terminal initiative, Fortune reported.

Moreover, the firm is reportedly considering establishing an internal market-making desk for prediction markets and prediction market indices.

The Block reached out to Paradigm for confirmation.

Paradigm has been a significant backer of Kalshi, the largest U.S. prediction market provider, since at least June, when it led Kalshi’s $185 million Series C round at a $2 billion valuation.

The venture firm also led Kalshi’s massive $1 billion Series E in December 2025 at an $11 billion valuation.

Kalshi is currently valued at approximately $22 billion, following another $1 billion raise disclosed in March.

Paradigm founder Matt Huang has previously said that prediction markets represent a trillion-dollar opportunity. Huang sits on Kalshi’s board of directors.

Trading terminals enable users to access platforms through a custom-built trading interface, potentially aggregating opportunities across competing trading platforms.

While Kalshi and Polymarket continue to dominate the nascent prediction market sector, they are facing increasing competition. Crypto natives like Coinbase, Crypto.com, and Genesis have launched offerings, while established gambling brands like DraftKings are also tapping the field.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Chairman Michael Selig has been vocal that prediction market activity is permitted under the agency’s remit. However, several states have lobbed legal challenges at firms including Kalshi and Crypto.com for allegedly violating local gambling laws.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Paradigm #PredictionMarkets #Kalshi #Polymarket #CryptoNews #Fintech #Trading #MarketMaking #CryptoMarket #Blockchain #Web3 #CryptoTrading #Startup #VentureCapital #DigitalAssets

Ripple Labs and Convera said Tuesday they have partnered to “enhance global payments through stablecoin and blockchain infrastructure.”

Convera, formerly known as Western Union Business Solutions, is a fintech that deals with over 140 currencies in approximately 200 countries and territories. The company was acquired for $910 million in 2021.

“With the growing presence and use of digital currencies such as crypto and stablecoins, Convera has maintained a thoughtful approach by listening to what our customers want while watching this space continue to mature,” Convera CEO Patrick Gauthier said in a statement. “Ripple is a clear leader in the crypto space and a natural fit for Convera.”

Gauthier previously served as head of Amazon Pay. Ripple is the primary advocate for XRP Ledger and issuer of the RLUSD stablecoin.

The two companies said they will utilize a “stablecoin sandwich” model in which payments “begin and end in fiat” but leverage stablecoins in between.

“Enterprises are increasingly looking for faster, more flexible ways to move money globally without taking on the complexity of digital assets directly,” Ripple SVP of Product Aaron Slettehaugh said.

Through acquisitions and partnerships, Ripple has been aggressively expanding its global network as stablecoins and traditional payments merge. Last week, the company joined the Singapore central bank’s BLOOM initiative to pilot programmable cross-border trade settlements using the XRP Ledger and Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin RLUSD

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Ripple #Convera #Stablecoin #CrossBorder #Payments #Fintech #CryptoNews #Blockchain #DigitalAssets #Web3 #GlobalPayments #XRP #CryptoAdoption #MoneyTransfer #FintechNews

Gnosis co-founder Friederike Ernst and Zisk founder Jordi Baylina on Sunday announced a new “easy” initiative: the Ethereum Economic Zone, or EEZ, at EthCC conference in Cannes. The initiative, which is being co-funded by the Ethereum Foundation, aims to create a framework for rollups that can compose synchronously with Ethereum mainnet and with each other within a single transaction.

The EEZ is designed to let smart contracts on connected rollups call contracts on mainnet or other EEZ rollups with the same guarantees as if they were deployed on Ethereum itself. The framework uses ETH as its default gas token and requires no additional bridging infrastructure.

“Ethereum doesn’t have a scaling problem. It has a fragmentation problem,” Ernst said in a statement. “Every new L2 that launches with its own liquidity pool and its own bridge is another walled garden.”

The project represents the latest and most concrete effort to address Ethereum’s well-documented L2 fragmentation problem. The proliferation of Layer 2 chains has been a persistent concern as the ecosystem scaled blockspace while splintering liquidity and user experience.

The project is launching alongside an informal collective called the EEZ Alliance. Founding members include DeFi lending protocol Aave, block builders Titan and Beaver Build, real-world asset platform Centrifuge, and tokenized equities project xStocks.

As The Block reported in 2024, analysts flagged that a new Ethereum L2 was appearing roughly every 19 days, with each one adding a new silo of fragmented liquidity. The Block’s own 2026 L2 outlook concluded that most new L2 launches became ghost towns shortly after incentive cycles while meaningful activity concentrated around a small set of ecosystems.

The EEZ also enters a crowded field of interoperability efforts. The Ethereum Foundation’s own Account Abstraction team unveiled an “Interop Layer” in November 2025 designed to make the L2 ecosystem feel like a single unified chain. Meanwhile, Optimism’s Superchain and Polygon’s AggLayer have pursued their own cross-chain coordination strategies, and the =nil; Foundation has been developing a zkSharding-based approach to the same underlying problem.

What distinguishes the EEZ, its proponents argue, is real-time ZK proving. Baylina, who created the Circom programming language and co-founded Polygon zkEVM before spinning off the team into independent venture Zisk last June, said his proving stack is the enabling technology. “We spent two years building a ZKVM that can prove Ethereum blocks in real time,” he said. “Synchronous composability between rollups isn’t theoretical anymore.”

The announcement did not arrive out of nowhere. GnosisDAO governance records from February 2026 show the community had already been debating a six-month R&D collaboration with Baylina to explore converting Gnosis Chain into a natively integrated Ethereum L2 with synchronous composability. The EEZ appears to be the product of that exploration.

The Ethereum Foundation’s decision to co-fund the initiative is notable given its recent shift to a leaner spending posture. The Foundation paused its open grants program in mid-2025 as part of an effort to cut its burn rate to roughly 5% per year. Co-executive directors Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz K. Stańczak have said their priorities include scaling Ethereum mainnet and improving L2 interoperability, making the EEZ a natural fit for the Foundation’s narrower focus.

The EEZ will be structured as a Swiss non-profit with all software released as free and open-source, per the release. The project aims for governance minimization and eventual non-upgradability. Technical specifications and performance benchmarks are expected in the coming weeks.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Ethereum #ETH #Gnosis #EEZ #Layer2 #Rollups #ZK #Blockchain #CryptoNews #Web3 #DeFi #CryptoInfrastructure #OnChain #Scaling #Interop

Bitcoin has held up better than gold and silver during the Iran war, with signs of inflows and rising activity, while precious metals have seen sharp outflows and position unwinds, JPMorgan analysts said.

Gold has fallen about 15% month-to-date, as rising interest rates and a stronger U.S. dollar weighed on “previously crowded positions,” JPMorgan analysts led by managing director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said in a Wednesday report. Both gold and silver had rallied to record highs earlier this year — near $5,500 for gold and $120 for silver — leaving them vulnerable to profit-taking and position liquidation once market conditions shifted, the analysts noted.

Gold exchange-traded funds saw nearly $11 billion in outflows over the first three weeks of March, while silver ETF flows have reversed all of the inflows built up since last summer, the analysts said. In contrast, bitcoin (BTC) has seen net inflows over the same period, pointing to relative strength compared with traditional safe-haven assets.

Bitcoin momentum signals recovering

Crypto activity surged in Iran following the outbreak of the war, as citizens moved funds from local exchanges to self-custody wallets and international platforms, the analysts said, citing Chainalysis data. Bitcoin’s borderless nature, ability to be held in self-custody, and 24/7 trading availability made it a preferred vehicle for capital movement during periods of economic instability, currency pressure, and capital controls, the analysts noted.

Institutional positioning also shows a shift. JPMorgan’s proxy for institutional futures positioning — based on changes in CME open interest — showed a build-up in gold and silver positions through late last year and early 2026, followed by a sharp decline since January, indicating profit-taking by institutional investors. Bitcoin futures positioning, by contrast, has remained relatively stable in recent weeks.

Momentum-driven traders appear to have amplified the move. Positioning signals tied to momentum strategies, such as commodity trading advisors, show gold and silver swinging from “overbought levels to below neutral,” suggesting forced liquidations played a role in the recent price declines, according to the analysts. Bitcoin momentum signals, meanwhile, have been recovering from “oversold levels towards neutral,” indicating improving sentiment.

Liquidity conditions have also shifted across assets. Gold has historically shown stronger market liquidity than both silver and bitcoin, as measured by the Hui-Heubel ratio, a metric that tracks market breadth and liquidity, the analysts said. However, that dynamic has recently reversed. Gold’s liquidity conditions have deteriorated, with bitcoin now showing better market breadth, while silver has seen an even sharper decline in liquidity, which may have worsened its price moves, according to the analysts.

“In all, silver ETF flows have unwound all of the previous inflows seen since last summer. The deterioration in liquidity conditions in gold has seen its market breadth decline below that of bitcoin currently,” the analysts concluded. “Crypto activity reportedly surged in Iran, highlighting the important role cryptocurrencies play as a safe haven for the citizens of countries that suffer from economic and currency instability as well as geopolitical stress.”

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Bitcoin #BTC #SafeHaven #CryptoNews #Gold #Silver #CryptoMarket #Geopolitics #DigitalAssets #MarketTrends

South Korean crypto exchanges saw roughly $60 billion in cryptocurrency outflow to overseas platforms and private wallets in the second half of 2025, according to the latest findings from the country’s top financial regulator.

In a report released Wednesday, the Financial Services Commission said total outflows reached 90 trillion won ($60 billion) during the period, up 14% from 78.9 trillion won ($52.5 billion) in the first half of the year.

“It is presumed that virtual assets are being transferred abroad for arbitrage and other similar activities,” the report said.

The report also showed that while user numbers and deposits on local exchanges increased during the period, overall profitability declined.

As of the end of last year, the number of crypto exchange accounts reached 11.1 million, up 3% from June 2025. Deposits rose more sharply, climbing 31% to 8.1 trillion won ($5.4 billion).

This growth did not translate into higher profits. The country’s 18 operating exchanges reported 380.7 billion won ($253.4 million) in operating profit in the second half, down 38% from 617.8 billion won ($411.2 million) in the first half.

The FSC estimated South Korea’s total crypto market capitalization at 87.2 trillion won (about $58 billion) at the end of 2025, down 8% from the first half of the year. Average daily transaction volume during the period was 5.4 trillion won ($3.6 billion), a 15% decline from the first half.

The regulator noted that declines in major crypto prices toward the end of last year likely contributed to the drop in volumes and exchange profitability.

The broader crypto market remains well below its October 2025 peak, when bitcoin hit an all-time high of around $126,080. Amid ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and a hawkish U.S. Federal Reserve outlook, bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies have stayed relatively stable in recent days.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#SouthKorea #CryptoOutflows #CryptoMarket #CryptoNews #Blockchain #DigitalAssets #CryptoExchange #CryptoAsia #CryptoData #CryptoTrends #Bitcoin #BTC #Altcoins #CryptoFlow #OnChain #CryptoTrading #MarketAnalysis #CryptoRegulation #GlobalCrypto #CryptoEconomy

Major crypto asset manager Grayscale has filed to list the Grayscale HYPE ETF, an exchange-traded fund that would track the native Hyperliquid token.

Hyperliquid is a high-performance Layer 1 blockchain focused on decentralized perpetual futures trading.

The network is currently the largest venue for onchain perps, according to The Block’s data.

According to the S-1 filing on Friday, the Grayscale HYPE ETF would trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol GHYP if approved. Like Grayscale’s other funds, it would tap Coinbase Custody as a custodian and use CoinDesk’s Benchmark pricing data.

RELATED INDICES

The filing also notes that HYPE staking is currently prohibited, though there is a “Staking Condition” that could be met in the future.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, now led by Paul Atkins, an appointee of President Donald Trump, has moved to approve a range of crypto-related funds, though the introduction of staking rewards has been slower.

Grayscale, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, is not the first to file a HYPE fund. Major crypto ETF players 21Shares, Bitwise and 21Shares filed late last year.

A relative newcomer in the crypto space, Hyperliquid has quickly gained prominence. While the project is barred to U.S. users, the recently formed Hyperliquid Policy Center is working on lobbying efforts in Washington DC.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Grayscale #HYPE #Hyperliquid #CryptoETF #CryptoNews #DeFi #Perps #DEX #Blockchain #CryptoMarket #DigitalAssets #CryptoInvesting #Web3 #Altcoins #CryptoFunds

Iran has begun extracting payments of up to $2mn per tanker for passage through the Strait of Hormuz, as the informal permits-for-passage system allowing only tankers from “friendly countries” through develops quickly, according to The Financial Times citing shipping data.

“Iran is charging $2mn per tanker to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The Financial Times reported the payment. The IRGC confirms it by radio. And the world’s most important chokepoint has been converted from a military blockade into a toll road,” according to the report.

American military planners were not expecting Iran to be able to keep the Strait open for the transits of selected oil tankers when preparing for this war. However, Tehran has introduced an informal system which allows tankers from certain countries to pass through the states. According to estimates around 90 tankers have traversed the chokepoint since the war broke out on February 28, Iran has continued to export its oil unabated and is earning a reported $150mn a day from allowing tankers from China, India, Bangladesh and others to sail through the narrow waterway.

Since the business began about a week ago, a bureaucracy is now being built up that effectively transfers what once was an open international waterway governed by the maritime right of innocent passage into a toll road that is entirely controlled by Tehran.

US President Donald Trump demanded the passage be opened by the US Navy, but the Navy has declared the passage “too dangerous to traverse.” Trump called on his Nato allies to send warships, but they have all refused. During an EU summit on March 19, the European powers said that they would not send any naval support until after the war was over.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has also suggested creating a “safe corridor” in order to allow ships into the Persian Gulf to supply essentials, similar to the Black Sea Grain Initiative introduced in the Ukraine conflict in 2022 to allow Ukrainian grain exports to reach international markets. The gulf states are almost entirely dependent on the import of food and other basics, as there is little domestic agricultural production in the region. The 100-odd tankers trapped in the Gulf also need to be resupplied.

The permits-for-passage system described relies on direct coordination with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. There is no central control as the Strait is currently controlled by one of the IRGC’s 31 autonomous cells acting under standing orders issued ahead of the war as part of its Decentralized Mosaic Defence doctrine (DMD).

“A tanker operator contacts intermediaries. The intermediaries negotiate with the IRGC. A fee is agreed, reportedly up to $2mn per voyage. Payment is made in cash, cryptocurrency, or barter. The vessel receives clearance. The IRGC hails the tanker on VHF radio, verifies its Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder data, and grants passage,” the report said.

“Roughly 89 to 90 vessels, including 16 oil tankers, have successfully made the journey between March 1 and March 15 under some form of IRGC clearance,” according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence. Not all ships were required to pay. Iranian-linked ship passes for free and other ships given permission via government-to-government negotiations, such as ships belonging to India, have also been given permits gratis, according to reports. On March 18 one ship that tried to traverse the strait without permission and with its AIS off was struck by an Iranian missile and turned back, according to reports.

The additional costs are compounding already elevated shipping expenses. “The $2mn sits on top of war-risk insurance that has surged to 3 to 5% of hull value where coverage exists at all,” according to Shanaka Anslem Perera, an independent analyst. Pre-war, the cost of insurance was a fraction of a percentage point of a tanker’s hull value. For a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC), the workhorse of the oil business, valued at $120mn, that implies premiums of $3.6mn to $6mn for a single voyage, alongside charter rates that have risen to as much as $800,000 per day.

“The total cost of moving a single cargo of crude through Hormuz now exceeds what it cost to move an entire fleet through the strait six months ago,” according to Perera.

These costs are feeding directly into global prices. “The $2mn is not a bribe. It is a tax levied by the IRGC on global commerce, collected at the narrowest point of the world’s most concentrated energy transit route, and passed through to 4bn people downstream,” Perera said. “The IRGC did not just close the strait. It reopened it selectively, on its terms, at its price.”

Ref: https://www.intellinews.com/iran-s-permits-for-passage-through-hormuz-system-is-developing-fast-432822/

#Iran #Hormuz #OilMarket #EnergyCrisis #OilSupply #GlobalEconomy #Geopolitics #MiddleEast #OilTrade #Shipping #WarRisk #EnergyNews #GlobalTrade #OilPrices #Maritime

A court in Buenos Aires has ordered a nationwide block of Polymarket, citing concerns that the crypto-based prediction platform operates as an unlicensed online betting system.

The ruling, issued by Judge Susana Parada, directs internet service providers to restrict access to the site across Argentina and requires Google and Apple to remove or limit access to its mobile applications, according to a report from local outlet Buenos Aires Times.

Prosecutors said the platform allowed users to place wagers without identity or age verification, enabling accounts to be created within minutes. Authorities argued that such gaps left minors able to participate without controls.

The investigation was triggered by a complaint from Buenos Aires’ gambling regulator, which said the platform was operating without authorization in the jurisdiction. Officials also said checks with national lottery bodies found no evidence that Polymarket held licenses in Argentina.

Scrutiny intensified after trading activity linked to Argentina’s inflation data drew attention, according to local reports. Trading volume on a Polymarket contract tied to February inflation rose to roughly $91,000 shortly before official figures were released, which some observers said raised questions about a potential information leak.

The Block reached out to Polymarket for comment.

Global crackdown on prediction venues

Regulatory pressure on prediction markets has mounted globally in recent months. Several European countries, including Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy, have already restricted access to Polymarket, while other jurisdictions, such as Colombia, have taken similar action.

The platform itself maintains geo-restrictions in multiple regions to comply with local laws, blocking users in parts of Europe, Asia, and sanctioned jurisdictions.

Regulators have increasingly focused on whether prediction markets resemble financial instruments or unlicensed gambling venues. Concerns have ranged from consumer protection to market integrity, particularly where contracts touch on sensitive real-world events.

Recent controversies have also kept the sector in focus. Polymarket has faced backlash over certain high-profile markets and reports of alleged insider-linked betting activity.

The platform is also navigating legal challenges in the United States as authorities work toward clearer rules. In Washington, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has signaled plans to establish a federal regulatory framework for prediction markets while some states crack down on sector leaders like Polymarket and Kalshi.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Argentina #Polymarket #PredictionMarket #CryptoRegulation #CryptoLaw #OnlineBetting #CryptoNews #Blockchain #CryptoSecurity #GlobalRegulation #Fintech #DigitalAssets #CryptoTrading #MarketIntegrity #TechPolicy

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit on Friday denied Custodia Bank’s petition for rehearing en banc in its lawsuit against the Federal Reserve, effectively closing the crypto bank’s last serious appellate avenue to force the central bank to grant it a master account.

The full court voted 7-3 against rehearing, leaving intact an October 2025 panel ruling that held the Fed has discretion to approve or deny master account applications from eligible institutions. That 2-1 panel decision had itself upheld a March 2024 district court ruling in Wyoming reaching the same conclusion.

Custodia, a Wyoming-chartered special purpose depository institution founded by Wall Street veteran Caitlin Long, first applied for a master account in October 2020. The Kansas City Fed confirmed the application contained “no showstoppers” in early 2021 but ultimately denied it in January 2023, citing concerns about the bank’s crypto-focused business model.

Custodia sued in June 2022, initially over the 19-month processing delay and later arguing that the Monetary Control Act entitled any eligible depository institution to a master account as a matter of law. Courts at every level have disagreed.

Judge Timothy Tymkovich authored a dissent from Friday’s en banc denial, warning that the majority’s interpretation hands regional Federal Reserve Banks unchecked power over which state-chartered institutions can access the payments system. He wrote that the ruling raises constitutional concerns about granting such authority to officials who are not appointed under Article II of the Constitution.

“Without a master account, a bank cannot operate in the modern banking system,” Tymkovich wrote in the dissent. He added that denying one is functionally equivalent to vetoing a state-issued bank charter, undermining the country’s dual banking system. Judge Allison Eid joined the dissent.

Custodia did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A person familiar with the bank’s efforts told CoinDesk on Friday that Custodia is still pursuing access. The bank’s remaining legal option would be a petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, a long shot in any circumstance, though the constitutional questions raised by Tymkovich and the involvement of former solicitors general Paul Clement and Don Verrilli as amici at earlier stages of the case could lend the petition some credibility.

Fed granted Kraken limited master account

The timing is striking. Custodia’s courtroom defeat lands just days after the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City granted Kraken Financial a limited-purpose master account, making it the first crypto-native firm to receive one. TD Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg said he expects the Kraken approval to be the first of many.

Fed Governor Christopher Waller proposed the concept of a “skinny master account” last year, designed to offer eligible institutions access to Fed payment rails while restricting features like discount window lending and interest on reserves. The Fed Board is now actively developing that framework, according to TD Cowen. The Fed also withdrew restrictive 2023 guidance that had underpinned its earlier posture toward crypto firms, including Custodia.

Whether Custodia elects to petition the Supreme Court, attempts to reapply for a master account through the new administrative channels, or both, remains to be seen. Custodia has continued to build in the meantime, launching the Avit stablecoin in partnership with Vantage Bank last year

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Custodia #FederalReserve #Fed #CryptoBank #CryptoRegulation #CryptoLaw #MasterAccount #CryptoPolicy #BankingAccess #DigitalAssets #CryptoNews #USCrypto #Stablecoin #Fintech #CryptoBanking

TON blockchain’s ecosystem conference set for May in Dubai has been cancelled amid the escalating conflict in the Middle East, the organization said Thursday.

“Unfortunately, due to the Middle East conflict and safety conditions in the UAE area, we have made the decision to cancel Gateway Dubai, originally scheduled for May 1 and 2, 2026,” TON posted on X. “This was a difficult call, but the safety and well-being of our community always comes first.”

Shortly after the U.S. and Israel launched strikes in Iran, the country attacked the United Arab Emirates with missiles and drones. Dubai, a popular city among crypto entrepreneurs, is the largest city in the UAE.

TON Gateway planned to bring together builders and developers working in the TON ecosystem. Event planners said Thursday they are “examining different formats to produce a Gateway event before the end of this year.”

“The UAE has borne the brunt of more than two-thirds of Iran’s strikes; the state targeted in part, say analysts, for its deep military and intelligence partnerships with western powers, and Dubai’s reputation as a favored centre for global finance and western holidays,” The Guardian reported Wednesday.

Dubai, along with many other cities in the region, has experienced severe travel disruptions due to the ongoing conflict.

The major crypto event Token2049, also set in Dubai and scheduled for next month, will go ahead as planned, according to Fortune.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#TON #TONBlockchain #CryptoEvent #Dubai #CryptoNews #Blockchain #Web3 #CryptoCommunity #CryptoConference #MiddleEast #TechEvents #CryptoIndustry #CryptoBuilders #TONGateway #CryptoUpdate

The United States’ two most prominent financial market regulators have agreed to collaborate in a manner that fosters innovation, including crypto regulation and new digital asset products.

Both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said Wednesday that they had entered into a Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU, that is meant “to guide coordination and collaboration between the two agencies to support lawful innovation, uphold market integrity, and ensure investor and customer protection.”

“For decades, regulatory turf wars, duplicative agency registrations, and different sets of regulations between the SEC and CFTC have stifled innovation and pushed market participants to other jurisdictions,” SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said in a statement.

The SEC and CFTC said the agreement represents a commitment to foster innovation and treat market participants respectfully. Among their planned initiatives, the two agencies said they would work on federal policy that provides a “fit-for-purpose regulatory framework for crypto assets and other emerging technologies.”

In the MOU, the two agencies also committed to “closely coordinating and cooperating to remove obstacles where appropriate, to the lawful introduction of … crypto asset products.”

Although MOUs are generally non-binding, the fact that the two agencies are officially voicing their intention to work closely together on policy measures that include crypto is likely a welcome sign for digital asset advocates. Although President Donald Trump’s administration has been more pro-crypto than the previous administration, there is still a lot of work to be done.

“America’s financial markets are the envy of the world because they scale and adapt to meet investor demands. Like our markets, the CFTC’s and SEC’s regulatory frameworks must also evolve and modernize to accommodate the needs of our market participants,” CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said. “This Memorandum of Understanding solidifies the agencies’ commitment to harmonize regulatory frameworks to provide comprehensive and seamless financial market oversight.”

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#SEC #CFTC #CryptoPolicy #CryptoRegulation #CryptoLaw #CryptoNews #DigitalAssets #Blockchain #Web3 #CryptoMarket #Fintech #CryptoInnovation #CryptoFramework #CryptoProducts #CryptoUSA #CryptoRules #CryptoIndustry #MarketRegulation #Finance #CryptoFuture

A federal judge in Manhattan on Friday dismissed a sweeping Anti-Terrorism Act lawsuit against Binance, founder Changpeng Zhao, and Binance.US operator BAM Trading, finding that 535 plaintiffs failed to plausibly allege that the exchange’s conduct aided specific terrorist attacks, according to a 62-page opinion from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Judge Jeannette A. Vargas ruled that plaintiffs adequately alleged Binance was “generally aware” of its role in terrorist financing, citing the exchange’s well-documented history of flouting AML/CFT rules, serving sanctioned Iranian users, and knowingly hosting wallets tied to designated terrorist organizations. But the court held that awareness alone was insufficient under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which requires plaintiffs to show “knowing and substantial assistance” with a nexus to the attacks themselves.

The plaintiffs, victims and relatives of victims of attacks perpetrated between 2016 and 2024 by groups including Hamas, Hezbollah, the IRGC, al-Qaeda, PIJ, and ISIS, had argued that Binance’s deliberate violations of sanctions law and anti-money laundering requirements effectively funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to terrorist organizations. The amended complaint detailed billions in Iranian transactions processed through Binance, the exchange’s hosting of sanctioned nested exchange Garantex, and internal communications showing executives were aware that terrorists transacted on the platform.

The court acknowledged this misconduct at length but concluded the allegations did not connect Binance’s actions to the specific attacks. With respect to Hamas and PIJ, which the court called “a closer call,” the opinion noted approximately $56 million in Hamas-linked and $59 million in PIJ-linked transfers through Binance, and the exchange’s own admission that it knew Hamas was transacting on the platform as early as 2019. But the court found the plaintiffs’ theory still depended on fungibility, meaning the logic that because Binance facilitated illicit transactions broadly, some of those funds must have supported the attacks.

Critically, the ruling applied the Second Circuit’s 2025 decision in Ashley v. Deutsche Bank, which held that a bank’s general facilitation of money laundering for clients with terrorist ties was too attenuated to support JASTA liability. Judge Vargas explicitly noted that a separate Binance terrorism case, Raanan v. Binance, had survived a motion to dismiss in February 2025 on similar Hamas and PIJ allegations, but noted that Raanan was decided before the Second Circuit’s Ashley ruling, which she concluded requires dismissal on the facts here.

Vargas also dismissed three conspiracy counts and a primary liability claim brought by the family of an infant who died after a Wizard Spider ransomware attack disrupted hospital systems. The court declined to reach personal jurisdiction questions regarding Zhao and BAM, having dismissed all claims on the merits.

The judge did not mince words about the 891-page complaint, calling its length “wholly unnecessary” and noting that a 30-page section on the evolution of Iranian politics from the 1970s onward “added little to the Plaintiffs’ claims.” But she granted the plaintiffs 60 days to file an amended complaint, signaling that the deficiencies could potentially be cured with more specific allegations about wallet ownership, transaction timing, and the relationship between particular account holders and the attacks.

Binance General Counsel Eleanor Hughes called the ruling “a complete vindication” and said the company is “confident that no amended pleading will be able to cure the fundamental deficiencies the Court identified.” Zhao, who pleaded guilty to federal AML and sanctions charges in November 2023 and was later pardoned by President Trump, had accused the plaintiffs of attempting to “piggyback” on Binance’s $4.3 billion criminal settlement.

The dismissal arrives during an intense period of scrutiny over Binance’s compliance record. The exchange has spent the past two weeks battling allegations from Sen. Richard Blumenthal and media reports that internal investigators discovered $1.7 billion in flows to Iran-linked entities and were subsequently fired. The Raanan case, brought by October 7 survivors, and a third lawsuit filed in North Dakota in November 2025, remain active.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Binance #CZ #CryptoNews #CryptoLaw #CryptoRegulation #CryptoExchange #Blockchain #CryptoMarket #Fintech #DigitalAssets #CryptoCompliance #AML #CryptoCase #CryptoIndustry #Web3 #CryptoPolicy #CryptoUpdate #CryptoJustice #CryptoRisk #CryptoWorld

PEI Licensing, the owner of the Penguin apparel brand, alleges that the Pudgy Penguins NFT brand has committed trademark infringement, according to a filing with the federal court.

The company said that although it sent Pudgy Penguins a cease-and-desist in October 2023, the NFT brand continued with its strategy of producing retail goods, which has had the effect of diluting the value of PEI’s Penguin brand, founded in 1955.

Pudgy Penguins has, in recent years, built a retail business that includes plush toys and apparel. In PEI’s complaint — filed with the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida — it provides examples of where it alleges Pudgy Penguins has infringed on its trademark.

“Defendant knew, or should have known, that Defendant’s unauthorized use of Defendant’s Marks would cause an injury via deception of representation, omission, or practice that is likely to mislead consumers, as it gives rise to the incorrect belief that Defendant has some connection with PEI,” Penguin apparel’s lawyers said.

Pudgy Penguins didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Image: Example of alleged trademark infringement. Source: PEI’s complaint
Pudgy pivot

As the NFT market crumbled and most popular brands struggled to forge alternative revenue streams built on physical products, Pudgy Penguins began selling plush toys in 2023. The brand offered its products in major retail chains like Walmart and Target.

Less than a year later, Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz announced that his company had sold over one million toys.

Pudgy Penguins has also produced and sold apparel like hats, hoodies, and sweatshirts, some of which were shown in PEI’s complaint. PEI is seeking monetary damages such as “all profits received by Defendant from sales and revenues of any kind … and all damages sustained by PEI as a result of Defendant’s actions,” the filing said

Ref: http://www.animalverse.club

#PudgyPenguins #PenguinBrand #NFTNews #NFT #CryptoNews #Trademark #IPLaw #Web3 #NFTCommunity #NFTProject #CryptoUpdate #NFTMarket #BrandDispute #Web3News #NFTBrand #CryptoLaw #NFTDrama #BlockchainNews #IPDispute #NFTWorld

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong didn’t mince words when he said the SocialFi experiments tested out in the Base App last year “didn’t quite work” in a recent episode of David Senra’s eponymous podcast.

“In the current incarnation, it wasn’t quite there in my view,” Armstrong said. “We tried it as an experiment. It didn’t quite work. The App has since pivoted to be more focused on trading and being a self-custodial version of the Coinbase app.”

In July 2025, Coinbase relaunched its noncustodial Coinbase Wallet as the Base App, pitched as an all-in-one “everything app” combining features of onchain social media, messaging, and gaming with its existing trading features.

Jesse Pollak, the head of Base at Coinbase, also heavily promoted the app’s Creator Coin features, which tokenized social media posts and creator accounts. Users could double-tap posts to buy associated tokens, with value flowing to creators.

“People were thinking of it as a way to reward and thank the creator,” Armstrong said.

However, Coinbase has since scaled back the SocialFi elements of the Base App to focus on trading. In January, Pollak posted to social media that “the app felt overly focused on social” and would “lean into a finance-first UX.”

The following month, Base also removed its Farcaster-powered social feed, shortly after that decentralized social media platform’s founding team sold the protocol.

While some notable creator coins briefly captured an audience, practically none of the tokens launched have maintained their value. For instance, Nick Shirley, a video journalist who went viral last year for reporting on alleged daycare fraud in Minnesota, launched what is often considered to be the most high-profile creator coin via Zora. $thenickshirley rallied to a $15 million market cap after being promoted by Armstrong, only for the token to crater.

Armstrong noted that “many posts” had “thousands of dollars worth of value at the terminal end” of Base’s SocialFi experiment.

“I think something is going to work in SocialFi,” Armstrong said, noting that the “tokenomics have not been quite figured out yet” and that the token’s “need to have some durability.”

Success and struggle

Still, at its height, Base grew to become the most popular chain for token launches in part due to the near-zero-cost token deployment enabled by Zora’s content coin mechanism. Asset manager Franklin Templeton also previously praised Base’s SocialFi appeal, largely due to the excitement around the launch of FriendTech v2 in 2024, which has since petered out.

Base’s creator coins are far from the only SocialFi experiment to struggle. In January, Aave Labs spun out Lens Protocol. Zora, meanwhile, has launched a new “attention markets” feature allowing users to bet on social media trends on Solana.

The Base protocol itself is undergoing a significant shift by replacing much of the OP Stack it was built on with bespoke parts. The Base team is also reportedly considering launching a native token.

Although Armstrong noted Base App’s SocialFi features were “polarizing,” he appeared grateful for the experience. The Coinbase co-founder and CEO noted that the company runs internal funding initiatives inspired by venture capital, where employees can pitch ideas to receive corporate funds, sometimes leading to outsized returns.

USDC, the second-largest stablecoin by market cap, was one such idea Armstrong initially “voted no” on, he said.

Ref : http://www.paykalken.com

#Coinbase #BrianArmstrong #BaseApp #BaseChain #SocialFi #CryptoNews #Web3 #Onchain #CreatorCoin #Tokenomics #CryptoMarket #USDC #Zora #Farcaster #FriendTech #DeFi #Blockchain #Altcoins #CryptoUpdate #FinanceFirst

Riot Platforms said it registered a record year for revenue in 2025 as the Bitcoin miner leans heavily into becoming a major provider of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing infrastructure.

The company said it posted $647.4 million in revenue last year, up from $376.7 million in 2024. Riot also produced 5,686 bitcoin in 2025, up from 4,828 the previous year, as BTC’s price soared during much of the fiscal period. The company now holds over 18,000 bitcoin.

“2025 marked a watershed year for Riot, defined by a strategic evolution in our business that has transformed our future trajectory,” Riot CEO Jason Les said in a statement. “By unlocking our large, nearly two-gigawatt power portfolio for high-demand data center infrastructure, we are driving significant shareholder value.”

In January, Riot inked a data center deal with semiconductor firm AMD. Shortly after, activist investor Starboard Value said Riot Platforms’ new focus on AI and HPC could be worth as much as $21 billion while encouraging the bitcoin miner to pivot as rivals also aim to reposition themselves as AI data center operators.

“We have successfully commenced operations on the first phase of the lease with AMD, generating revenue for Riot, as of January 2026,” Les also said. “This partnership validates our unique ability to rapidly deliver power capacity at scale for the world’s leading technology companies.”

Riot said the average cost of mining bitcoin increased last year to $49,645, as compared with $32,216 per bitcoin in 2024. Still, with bitcoin’s price soaring to an all-time high in 2025, Riot’s BTC mining revenue climbed to $576.3 million last year, jumping from $321.0 million during the previous period.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

RiotPlatforms #BitcoinMining #BTC #CryptoNews #AIInfrastructure #HPC #DataCenter #AMD #WallStreet #CryptoStocks #BitcoinBull #AIShift #TechInvesting #Blockchain #DigitalAssets

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is working to regain momentum on crypto oversight after what Chairman Paul Atkins described as a “big missed opportunity” under the prior administration.

On Friday, Atkins criticized the agency under former Chair Gary Gensler and said the SEC hadn’t tried to adapt to innovations during a fireside chat at the University of Texas.

“This has been a big missed opportunity for the United States that we’re quickly … trying to make up time for,” Atkins said.

Under Gensler, the SEC took a more cautious — and enforcement-heavy — stance toward crypto, asserting that many digital assets were securities and bringing numerous cases against firms, largely over registration violations.

Since the start of the Trump administration, however, the SEC has adopted a more industry-friendly posture. The agency established a crypto task force, dropped numerous enforcement cases against big industry players, and embarked on “Project Crypto” to modernize its rules.

While Atkins noted that individual cryptocurrencies may rise and fall, he expressed particular enthusiasm for the broader potential of distributed ledger technology, especially in payment clearing and settlement systems.

Earlier this week, the SEC granted WisdomTree exemptive relief for the 24/7 trading and instant settlement for its WisdomTree Treasury Money Market Digital Fund — marking a first in the U.S.

“We’ve approved tokenized money market mutual funds, and to come will be tokenized bank deposits,” Atkins said.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#SEC #Crypto #CryptoRegulation #PaulAtkins #GaryGensler #TrumpAdministration #DigitalAssets #Blockchain #DLT #Tokenization #MoneyMarketFund #WisdomTree #24x7Trading #InstantSettlement #ProjectCrypto

PayPal’s consumer scale, including peer-to-peer app Venmo, would strengthen Stripe’s expansion beyond its core merchant business, Mizuho analysts said Tuesday after reports that a deal could be in the works.

Mizuho analysts Dan Dolev and Alexander Jenkins issued the note after Bloomberg reported Stripe expressed interest in acquiring all or part of PayPal. The privately held payments firm recently marked its valuation at $159 billion, compared with PayPal’s roughly $43 billion market capitalization.

“Stripe’s recent valuation of $159 billion dwarfs PayPal’s $43 billion market cap, making a transaction feasible from a size standpoint,” the analysts wrote.

On potential upside, Mizuho said Stripe, long viewed primarily as a business-to-business payments provider, would gain a scaled consumer brand through PayPal and Venmo, which the analysts described as the “ultimate” peer-to-peer franchise.

Additionally, the analysts suggested PayPal’s Braintree merchant infrastructure could help Stripe compete with its payments processor rival Adyen. “Braintree would add about ~$700 billion of total payment volume (TPV), which is material,” they said, adding that Stripe’s annual TPV is roughly $1.4 trillion.

Both PayPal and Stripe are already active in the stablecoin sector. Combined, Stripe and PayPal could become a stronger player in the space, the analysts said.

Stripe acquired stablecoin platform Bridge last year, while PayPal launched its own dollar-pegged token in 2023 through a partnership with Paxos.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Venmo #PayPal #Stripe #Mizuho #Paxos #Stablecoins #Financial #Fintech

Solana Company (NASDAQ: HSDT) is kicking off an infrastructure buildout in the Asia-Pacific region, a first step in directly supporting Solana staking and validator operations.

This so-called Pacific Backbone initiative will involve developing a high-speed, low-latency network initially starting with connections between Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong, according to an announcement on Monday.

“The reality is, we see an opportunity to improve Solana staking and validation for users across Asia,” said Cosmo Jiang, general partner at Pantera Capital Management, a major HSDT backer. “We believe this investment roadmap will be critical for anyone holding and building on Solana and we expect it to diversify our revenue.”

Pantera, alongside Summer Capital, co-led the more than $500 million funding round that launched the Solana Company in September amid the so-called digital asset treasury investment trend that has since reversed. The firm was initially pitched as a SOL token holding vehicle that would also invest in other Solana operations.

Project Backbone will address gaps in Solana’s network coverage in the APAC region, helping to reduce staking and validation costs while boosting performance to meet the needs of market makers, high-frequency traders, and other Solana partners. Using “state-of-the-art hardware” may help capture “more value within the staking business,” according to the statement.

“In order to target mass adoption, Solana Company intends to build out DeFi, liquid staking, AMMs, RPC services, and execution services for its traditional finance partners in the APAC region,” the firm noted. “Solana Company plans to begin building out the network infrastructure immediately, expanding to optimizing performance and adopting new technologies by the second half of 2026, and anticipates launching liquidity related new products and services within the next 12 to 18 months.”

RELATED INDICES

Earlier this month, the firm partnered with Anchorage Digital and Kamino on a joint venture to enable institutions to borrow against natively staked SOL while keeping assets in custody.

The Solana Company has held over 2.2 million SOL since it began acquiring tokens in October, making it the second-largest publicly traded holder, according to The Block’s data. The total staked amount of Solana by public companies has largely held consistent despite a market retrenching that has seen Solana DAT valuations crater to all-time lows in recent days.

HSDT shares were down 8.3% Monday morning. Other crypto-related stocks are in the red on Monday, with bellwether crypto stock Coinbase down over 3% and major Ethereum treasury firm Bitmine down over 4%, according to The Block’s equities tracker. The biggest loser is small-cap Bitcoin treasury Prenetics, which is down over 7%.

HSDT is down over 90% since the firm first pivoted towards its Solana-related strategy in September. The firm, formerly Helius Medical Technologies, reportedly maintains its neurotech and medical device operations.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Pantera #Solana #Company #APAC #staking #infrastructure #SOL #Crypto #Blockchain

Vitalik Buterin is building a “cypherpunk principled non-ugly ethereum” as part of his future vision for the largest onchain ecosystem.

In response to a post on X arguing that Buterin “should let the original ethereum die a slow and painful death by fragmentation (tempo, reth, l2s, app chains, institutions, etc) and rebuild it as a cypherpunk chain from first principles on risc v just to show who was the boss,” Buterin responded:

“I’m actually trying to do something even more ambitious: Create ‘cypherpunk principled non-ugly ethereum’ as a bolt-on to the present-day system, in a way that’s as tightly integrated and interoperable as possible, and then grow it over time, in the mean time making sure ethereum itself gains the cypherpunk and simplicity properties that just necessarily have to be system-wide (eg. censorship resistance, zk prover friendliness, consensus properties).”

FOCIL inclusion

The statement comes on the heels of the controversial Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL) mechanism being officially “scheduled for inclusion” by Ethereum devs on Thursday for the upcoming Hegota hard fork. FOCIL was named as the consensus-layer (CL) headliner for Hegota, which is scheduled for late 2026, following the next Glamsterdam hard fork in the coming months, during Thursday’s All Core Devs call.

FOCIL, entered as EIP-7805, is essentially a bid to ensure Ethereum remains censorship-resistant at the protocol level by forcing validators to include all transactions. It does this by enabling committees of Ethereum validators to enforce transaction inclusion in blocks via fork-choice rules and inclusion lists (IL).

If a proposed block ignores valid transactions from the committee’s ILs — including transactions that may violate OFAC sanctions — the chain forks away from it, guaranteeing that any valid, public-mempool transaction gets included within a bounded number of slots.

FOCIL has been a controversial proposal, and was previously excluded from inclusion in Glamsterdam. Critics argue it could create legal ramifications for Ethereum validators and increase protocol complexity. Still, FOCIL, alongside other protocol improvements, is key to Buterin’s vision for the future of a more cypherpunk and “harder” Ethereum.

Harder Ethereum

In another X post, Buterin noted that FOCIL pairs well with EIP-8141, an account abstraction upgrade also as part of Hegota that would enable native support for smart wallets, multisig, quantum-resistant keys, and gas-sponsored privacy transactions without wrappers.

“With EIP-8141 (AA), transactions from smart wallets, privacy protocols, etc, could be sent *through a public mempool, and directly received by a FOCIL includer*, no wrappers, ‘public broadcasters’, or other intermediaries required,” Buterin wrote. “Ethereum is going hard.”

Both upgrades are part of the Ethereum Foundation’s trilateral goals of scaling, hardening, and simplifying the Ethereum base layer, as laid out in a recent blog outlining “protocol priorities for 2026.”

“Harden the L1 is a new track, and it reflects something we think deserves dedicated focus: making sure that as Ethereum scales and evolves, it retains the properties that make it valuable in the first place,” the authors wrote.

At the same time, Buterin has also pushed to make a “lean Ethereum,” by reducing technological complexity and bloat through a full network redesign. Part of this initiative is the so-called “Beam Chain” that would be ZK-native from the start by enshrining ZK-EVM proofs directly into L1 validation.

Leaner Ethereum

Another part is the long-term goal of swapping out the Ethereum Virtual Machine for RISC-V as Ethereum’s native virtual machine. RISC-V supports compiling a wider range of programming languages like Solidity, Rust, and C, while offering greater ZK support, for the Ethereum execution layer, devs have argued.

All this comes months into a radical refocusing on Ethereum’s base layer scalability and functionality that kicked off last year amid increasing competition from alternative chains like Solana. As part of the reorganization of the Ethereum Foundation, Buterin has become a more vocal leader of the ecosystem, seen by a willingness to back controversial and difficult decisions.

This arguably came to a head earlier this month when Buterin more or less abandoned the “rollup-centric roadmap” he had championed for years, which looked to scale Ethereum through a network of Layer 2s.

Rather than allowing Ethereum to “die a slow and painful death by fragmentation,” from other Layer 1 users of the EVM, like Tempo, or other parasitic chains, Buterin has once again affirmed a decision to build in action.

“Ethereum has already made jet engine changes in-flight once (the merge), we can do it ~4 times more! (state tree, Lean consensus, ZK-EVM verification, VM change),” he said on Friday.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#VitalikButerin #Cypherpunk #Ethereum #FOCIL #ETH #Onchain #OnchainEcosystem #Crypto #Blockchain

Newity, a fintech firm focused on facilitating small business loans, has raised $11 million in a strategic funding round as it explores bringing those loans onchain.

CMT Digital, a division of trading and investment firm CMT Group, led the round, Newity said Thursday. Additional participants included private and institutional investors, Newity co-founder and co-CEO David Cody told The Block, but he declined to disclose their names.

Cody said the round marks Newity’s first fundraise, which began at the end of 2024 and closed in December 2025. The round was structured as a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE), he said, declining to disclose Newity’s valuation or whether any investors received board or advisory seats.

Newity was founded in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic by Cody and co-CEO Luke LaHaie to help small businesses navigate funding challenges during the Paycheck Protection Program, a U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) loan initiative launched to support businesses during the crisis. After the program ended in May 2021, Newity shifted its focus to SBA 7(a) government-backed loans and growth term loans.

Newity itself is not an SBA lender. Instead, it acts as a lending service provider to participating SBA lender Northeast Bank, which ultimately originates and approves the loans, according to its website.

Since launch, Newity said it has processed and serviced more than $12 billion in financing for over 125,000 small businesses. Cody said the average loan size is approximately $118,800 life-to-date, with a maximum loan size of $350,000.

Asked how using Newity differs from applying directly through an SBA lender, Cody said borrowers working directly with lenders must follow each lender’s process and timeline, which can vary significantly. “Some lenders have adopted technology; others still rely heavily on paper,” he said.

Newity, by contrast, offers a fully online application process, automated documentation workflows, and a dedicated team to move applications forward. Borrowers can receive funding in as little as three weeks through Newity, compared with traditional timelines that can exceed 12 weeks, he added.

Cody said Newity’s “AI-first underwriting platform” analyzes hundreds of data points — including credit checks, identity verification, and tax document summaries — to determine eligibility and streamline the application process. “This allows borrowers to receive a prequalified loan amount in less than 10 minutes and funding in as little as 21 days, rather than waiting 12+ weeks,” he said.

Newity generates revenue through loan-processing fees. On its crypto strategy, Cody said the firm is exploring various options to take loans onchain and expects to announce its path in the first quarter.

“We’re not improving small business lending, we’re reinventing the financial infrastructure that connects entrepreneurs to capital,” LaHaie said. “AI and blockchain give us the infrastructure to empower our team to operate at the scale that this market demands.”

Newity said small businesses represent 99.9% of U.S. firms and employ nearly half the nation’s workforce, yet face a $350 billion annual funding shortfall — a gap the company aims to address.

Newity is headquartered in Chicago and has about 115 employees, most of whom work from the office, with some remote staff, Cody said. The firm is actively hiring across partner, marketing, and technology roles, he added.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Fintech #Newity #Business #Loans #Onchain #CMT #CMTDigital #CMTGroup

Ethereum’s tokenized real-world asset market has topped $17 billion in value issued on its mainnet, according to The Block’s data, as large players like BlackRock and JPMorgan continue bringing traditional funds onchain.

The figure represents a nearly 315% increase from a year earlier, when the sector was worth $4.1 billion, and reinforces Ethereum’s dominance as the leading blockchain for tokenized finance. Ethereum currently accounts for approximately 34% of total onchain RWA value across all networks. Stablecoins on Ethereum mainnet have also climbed above $175 billion in aggregate market capitalization, underscoring the network’s role as the primary settlement layer for tokenized dollar-denominated assets.

RWA boom

The growth highlights an accelerating shift by traditional financial institutions toward blockchain-based versions of familiar products. Wall Street incumbents, including BlackRock and JPMorgan, are building blockchain-native payments, savings, and investment instruments on Ethereum.

BlackRock’s tokenized Treasury fund, BUIDL, has emerged as the flagship product in the category. Launched in 2024 via Securitize, the fund invests in short-term U.S. government securities and has grown to become the largest tokenized money-market vehicle on public blockchain infrastructure.

Earlier this month, BlackRock expanded BUIDL’s utility by enabling direct onchain trading through UniswapX in collaboration with Securitize and Uniswap Labs, marking one of the clearest intersections yet between institutional capital and decentralized finance.

JPMorgan has also entered the arena. In December, the bank launched its first tokenized money-market fund on Ethereum, seeding it with $100 million and targeting qualified investors. The move builds on the firm’s broader blockchain strategy and signals that tokenized yield products are gaining traction beyond crypto-native issuers.

Recent market activity suggests the momentum is not confined to Treasuries alone. This week, Wintermute launched institutional trading for tokenized gold, forecasting that the tokenized commodities segment could reach $15 billion in 2026. Commodities already represent more than $5 billion of Ethereum’s RWA footprint.

The surge in Ethereum-based RWAs also aligns with broader projections from major financial institutions. Standard Chartered has previously estimated that tokenized real-world assets could reach $2 trillion by 2028, with the vast majority issued on Ethereum. ARK Invest has projected that tokenized assets could climb to roughly $11 trillion by 2030 from current levels.

Disclaimer: Evgeny Gaevoy, the founder and CEO of Wintermute, previously sat on The Block’s board of directors from April 2023 to early November 2023 and remains a minority shareholder.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Ethereum #tokenized #RWA #ETH #BlackRock #JPMorgan #traditional #onchain #Crypto #Cryptocurrency

X head of product Nikita Bier confirmed Saturday that the social media platform will roll out Smart Cashtags in the coming weeks, enabling users to trade stocks and cryptocurrencies directly from their timeline. The forthcoming update represents the most concrete step yet toward integrating financial services into the “super-app” platform’s core experience.

Bier also promised new efforts to crack down on apps that create spam posts or encourage raiding and harassment, the latest in a series of proclamations that have sometimes drawn the ire of crypto traders on the platform.

“I genuinely want crypto to proliferate on X, but applications that create incentives to spam, raid, and harass random users are not the way,” Bier wrote in a post on X. “And yes, we are launching a number of features in a couple weeks, including Smart Cashtags that will enable you to trade stocks and crypto directly from timeline.”

“All automation & spam via scraping or API will be flagged and evaluated extensively,” Christopher Park, director of X’s developer platform, added in his own X post. “No more bots/programs that do or incentivize large scale platform manipulation, engagement farming, spam, & scraping.”

Bier first teased the feature on Jan. 11, describing X as “the best source for financial news” and noting that “hundreds of billions of dollars are deployed based on things people read here.” At the time, he said the team was collecting feedback ahead of a public release targeting February.

Smart Cashtags build on X’s existing $TICKER system, where users prefix symbols with a dollar sign to create clickable links. Under the new system, users will be able to specify an exact asset or smart contract address when posting a ticker. Tapping the tag will display live price charts, related posts across the platform, and direct trading options. Early mockups showed integrated “Buy” and “Sell” buttons alongside price data.

Bier has said the API powering Smart Cashtags will work in near real-time for anything minted on-chain. That opens the door for smaller-cap tokens not listed on centralized exchanges to appear alongside equities like $NVDA.

Saturday’s comments came in response to a thread about third-party crypto apps on X. Argentine tech entrepreneur Santiago Siri had argued that OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger was leaving substantial token fees on the table by resisting tokenization efforts. Bier called Siri’s characterization of “claim your fees” mechanics “the most dishonest perspective” he had read and said X would update its API rules to block apps that create fee pools for non-consenting users.

Smart Cashtags fit into a broader financial services push at X. Then-CEO Linda Yaccarino announced a partnership with Visa in January 2025 to launch X Money, a digital wallet for peer-to-peer payments. By June, she told the Financial Times the platform would roll out in-app trading and investing under the X Money banner.

The company holds money transmitter licenses in more than 40 U.S. states, though it has yet to secure approval in New York after withdrawing its application there. Elon Musk said at an xAI presentation earlier this month that X Money has completed internal employee testing and will open to a limited external beta within one to two months. It’s been about three years and three months since Musk acquired Twitter, now X, for about $44 billion.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#SmartCashtags #crypto #Cryptocurrency #Financial #Twitter

Birch Hill Holdings, an institutional onchain credit infrastructure company focused on lending and tokenized asset markets, has closed a $2.5 million pre-seed funding round co-led by ParaFi Capital and Castle Island Ventures.

The round was structured as a Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE). It opened in late November and closed in early 2026, Birch Hill CEO Bhavin Vaid told The Block. Nascent, FalconX Ventures, JST Digital, and Flowdesk also participated in the round, alongside angel backers such as Bluerock founder and CEO Ramin Kamfar. The company did not disclose a post-money valuation.

The New York-based firm said it is building institutional lending strategies designed to prioritize capital preservation and structured risk controls, with its initial vaults launching on Morpho. Birch Hill has onboarded as an institutionally focused curator on the platform and plans to expand to additional protocols, such as Euler, Vaid said.

“Credit markets stand to benefit from the efficiencies of blockchain-based settlement, but institutional participation has been limited by the need for stronger risk oversight and operational clarity,” Vaid said in a statement. “Our goal is to bring the discipline of traditional credit investing together with modern infrastructure in a way that meets institutional standards for governance, transparency, and risk management.”

Birch Hill’s founding team brings experience from both traditional finance and digital asset infrastructure. Vaid began his career in structured credit at Goldman Sachs and later invested in private equity at Cerberus Capital, before joining digital asset investment firm 10T Holdings in 2021. CTO Jack Forlines and COO Connor Flanagan previously worked on institutional risk systems within BlackRock’s Aladdin platform before moving into digital asset data and infrastructure. Forlines and Flanagan later co-founded Unit Zero Labs, a research firm focused on onchain protocol analytics, now operating as Birch Hill Labs and underpinning the firm’s vault design and quantitative risk framework.

Building institutional risk controls for onchain credit

Birch Hill’s approach centers on its Collateral Risk Framework, which tracks collateral liquidity, oracle redundancy, and market-level metrics in real time. The firm said the system is structured to support transparent governance and documentation for regulatory and client reporting.

“Most onchain risk models focus on liquidation parameters and protocol-level safety,” Vaid told The Block. “Our framework layers institutional-grade monitoring and real-time tracking of collateral quality, liquidity depth, and oracle integrity, paired with an auditable governance layer designed for regulatory and client reporting. It’s built for allocators who need to explain their risk exposures to a board or compliance officer, not just avoid bad debt.”

Vaid said Birch Hill is targeting traditional asset managers, credit-focused originators, registered investment advisers, family offices, and other funds with fiduciary obligations seeking compliant, auditable exposure to onchain credit, and is currently in active discussions with multiple parties.

Rather than aggregating yield from existing DeFi pools, the company said it aims to expand credit generation by bringing real-world assets and institutional borrowers onchain, a thesis it argues requires different infrastructure and risk controls.

As a curator, Birch Hill sets vault parameters, selects eligible collateral, establishes risk limits, and oversees ongoing monitoring. Its institutional focus translates into tighter collateral standards, more conservative loan-to-value ratios, and detailed exposure reporting, according to the team.

“For example, we may exclude collateral assets that other curators accept if the liquidity profile or oracle coverage doesn’t meet our standards,” Vaid said. “We also provide institutional clients with detailed reporting on vault exposures, collateral composition, and risk metrics — the same information they’d expect from a traditional credit manager. Every parameter change has a documented rationale. The goal is vaults that institutions can underwrite and explain to their stakeholders.”

With the fresh capital in place, Birch Hill said it plans to expand its engineering and risk infrastructure teams and pursue regulatory authorizations, including potential registration as a registered investment adviser and evaluating broker-dealer registration in the United States.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#BirchHill #ParaFi #PayFiCapital #Onchain #Web3 #DeFi #Blockchain #Crypto #Cryptocurrency

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has outlined an updated framework for how blockchain technology can intersect with artificial intelligence, arguing that Ethereum’s role lies less in pursuing artificial general intelligence and more in shaping how AI systems interact, coordinate, and govern in the real world.

In a post shared to X on Monday, Buterin revisited and revised ideas he first outlined two years ago on the overlap between crypto and AI.

According to him, the two fields are often discussed from “completely separate philosophical perspectives.” He cautioned against framing progress as a race toward AGI, describing that mindset as an undifferentiated form of acceleration rather than a deliberate choice about direction.

“To me, Ethereum, and my own view of how our civilization should do AGI, are precisely about choosing a positive direction rather than embracing undifferentiated acceleration of the arrow,” Buterin wrote.

Rather than focusing on building autonomous superintelligence, Buterin’s updated view centers on practical, near-term applications where Ethereum could serve as part of a broader stack enabling privacy, decentralization, and human agency in an AI-saturated world.

Tooling and mechanics

One pillar of that vision involves tooling that allows people to interact with AI systems in more trustless and private ways. Buterin pointed to local large language models, cryptographic payment mechanisms for AI services, and client-side verification techniques that reduce reliance on centralized intermediaries when accessing AI capabilities.

Another focus is Ethereum’s potential role as an economic coordination layer for AI-related activity.

In that context, Buterin described onchain mechanisms that could support AI agents transacting with one another, posting security deposits, or building reputational histories. This could enable more decentralized AI architectures rather than systems run entirely within a single organization, Buterin said.

Buterin also revisited a long-standing cypherpunk ideal: minimizing trust by maximizing verification. He argued that LLMs could make that vision more practical by handling tasks that humans cannot realistically perform at scale, such as independently verifying smart contracts, transaction proposals, or protocol trust assumptions.

Governance

In the governance and markets domain, Buterin suggested that AI could help unlock ideas that have struggled to function in practice due to human attention limits. Prediction markets, decentralized governance systems, and complex voting mechanisms could become more viable, he said, if AI tools are used to scale human judgment rather than replace it.

He stated that the combined vision is aligned with what he has previously described as “defensive acceleration,” or d/acc — using technology to strengthen decentralized cooperation and societal resilience while avoiding the concentration of power.

The post builds on Buterin’s earlier analysis of four broad crypto-AI overlap areas — AI as an actor, interface, rule-set, or objective — first published in January 2024. It also aligns with his broader recent calls for rethinking DAO design beyond token-based voting models, including the use of zero-knowledge proofs and AI to reduce governance capture and decision fatigue.

Buterin accompanied the post with a simple two-by-two chart mapping Ethereum’s AI-related ambitions along axes of infrastructure versus impact and survival versus flourishing, underscoring that the ideas span both defensive and transformative use cases.

“There’s a lot to build,” he wrote.

Vitalik Buterin maps Ethereum’s role at the intersection of AI | Image: Vitalik Buterin/X

Ref http://www.paykalken.com

#VitalikButerin #Ethereum #ETH #Crypto #Cryptocurrency

Labs is sunsetting the Avara “umbrella brand,” which once housed its semi-related family of Web3 projects, including Lens, the decentralized social media project recently acquired by Mask, and the Family wallet, which Aave co-founder Stani Kulechov said on Tuesday will be wound down.
“All current and future products, including the Aave mobile app, Aave Pro, and Aave Kit, will operate under Aave Labs,” Avara said on X. “This change simplifies our brand surface under Aave Labs and focuses our resources on building Aave brand awareness and introducing DeFi to millions of new users globally.”

The move to sunset Avara and cut loose its non-lending-related intellectual property comes amid a shift in focus at Aave Labs to recenter attention on the Aave lending protocol.

It also comes amid a simmering debate between Aave Labs, the private company that initially developed the Aave lending protocol, and the Aave DAO, which has largely shepherded the Aave smart contracts and protocol parameters since the Avara rebrand in 2023, over which entity ultimately controls Aave.

Aave is by far the dominant onchain credit system on Ethereum.

Labs vs. DAO?

Last December, Aave Labs sparked tensions within the Aave community after integrating CoW Swap into the official aave.com interface and redirecting swap fees that previously funded the Aave DAO treasury to a private wallet controlled by Aave Labs.

That move surfaced questions over who truly owns Aave. The Aave DAO, governed by AAVE token holders, is said to control the protocol’s smart contracts, risk parameters, and protocol-level revenue, while Aave Labs owns key off-chain elements like the official frontend (aave.com), branding, domains, social media, IP, trademarks, and other user-facing products.

A community-led “poison pill” proposal to legally seize Aave Labs’ IP, code, brand assets, and equity — essentially turning the company into a DAO subsidiary — failed during a governance vote, in part due to Aave Labs’ and Kulechov’s concentrated token holdings. However, Kulechov has since proposed sharing future non-protocol revenue with AAVE holders and revisiting the IP and branding question.

At the time of the Avara rebrand, a Finnish phrase for “seeing more than you see,” Kulechov said the company wanted to expand beyond its DeFi niche into other web3 verticals. Now, however, it appears that Kulechov is once again championing DeFi.

In January, Aave announced it sold the Lens web3 social media protocol and it will now look to wind down its Family wallet-related projects.

“As part of this transition, the Avara brand is no longer required as we go all in on bringing Aave to the masses,” Kulechov said on X. “We are now united as one team of world-class designers, engineers, and smart contract experts, aligned around a single mission: bringing DeFi to everyone.”

Late last year, Aave unveiled an upgraded Aave App offering high-yield savings options, including interest rates of up to 9% and “insurance-backed protection” on deposits up to $1 million. Kulechov also previously said the protocol is pursuing a long-term plan to scale toward trillions of dollars in onchain financial activity, following the conclusion of a multi-year regulatory probe by U.S. authorities.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported Kulechov had purchased a five-story Victorian mansion in London’s Notting Hill for £22 million, or about $30 million, sparking some pushback.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

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