We launched in 2022 as the news arm of DefiLlama, the crypto data platform beloved by much of the industry. Our founders had spent years in crypto and were frustrated by the state of crypto journalism. They wanted something that avoided both the sneering condescension of mainstream coverage and the relentless shilling that had infected so much of crypto media itself.

Unlike DefiLlama, however, DL News was never conceived as a public good. It was supposed to become a real, profitable business.

Welp. That did not happen.

We began work on DL News before Elon Musk bought Twitter, before AI transformed publishing, and during a very different moment for digital media. In those early days, people around us talked constantly about building the “Bloomberg of crypto.”

But a major internal conflict at DefiLlama in early 2023 left us effectively separated from the company we were built alongside. For the next two years, communication between the organisations was minimal. We remained tied to the DefiLlama name and identity, but without meaningful operational alignment or access to its much larger distribution.

At the same time, the media environment deteriorated rapidly. We realised relatively early that a traditional subscription model would not sustain the business, and in 2024 we launched DL Research as our commercial arm. That effort succeeded beyond what many thought possible. In 2025, revenue grew 270% and we crossed seven figures in annual sales, building a client base that included some of the biggest names in crypto. We began to collaborate meaningfully with our sister company.

I remain deeply impressed by what our research team accomplished. They built a serious revenue engine from scratch in one of the most competitive - some might say hostile - markets imaginable.

But it was not enough to offset the broader pressures bearing down on DL News. Traffic across crypto and tech media contracted severely. AI accelerated the collapse of search distribution and enabled endless waves of parasitic aggregation. Our journalism remained excellent, but fewer people were seeing it on our site, and commercial viability became increasingly difficult without meaningful audience scale.

By mid-April, it became increasingly clear that we were out of time. We started lay-offs, and on May 1, informed staff that DL News would close at the end of the month.

Amidst the disappointment, I keep returning to how special this team is. We broke major stories. We showed up where others didn’t. We angered powerful people often enough that legal threats became almost routine. I have never been prouder than when those threats arrived (also, frightened) because they meant our journalists had done exactly what they were supposed to do.

We were scrappy underdogs, and like most underdogs, we did not win. But the work was great, and it mattered. And if anyone reading this is hiring, I can say without hesitation that you will not find a smarter, kinder, funnier, or more talented team than the people leaving DL News. I will miss them all very much.

Opinions below are his own.

At a pivotal moment for the future of money, last week an evidence session with the Bank of England offered something we do not often get: a clear, candid readout from the heart of the UK’s monetary authority on how it views digital assets, systemic stablecoins, and the digital pound.

After 18 months deeply engaged in the digital assets regulatory debate, as co-chair of the APPG on Digital Markets and Digital Money, I came away with two overriding impressions: the Bank is listening, and the Bank is cautious. Both are understandable. Neither, on their own, will be sufficient.

Let’s start with the positive. The tone of engagement matters, and it is improving. The Bank’s willingness to absorb and reflect on feedback, particularly on its consultation into systemic stablecoins, is both genuine and welcomed. This is not a regulator operating in isolation; it is one actively trying to understand how innovation is unfolding in real time.

That matters because stablecoins are no longer theoretical. Properly structured, they offer the prospect of faster, cheaper, more programmable payments. Improperly handled, they introduce risks that go to the core of financial stability. The Bank’s recognition of both sides of that equation is reassuring. It is taking the time to get this right. But here is the rub: time is not a neutral variable.

We are operating in a global financial system where capital, capability and confidence move quickly. Other jurisdictions are making calls, some more permissive, some more experimental, all reflective of their own economic priorities. The Bank is right when it says “their economies are built differently.” But markets are global. And innovation does not wait for perfect policy alignment.

This brings us to the central theme underpinning everything we heard: risk. At its core, this debate is not about technology, it is about the level of risk the Bank is willing to see, tolerate, and ultimately absorb into the UK financial system. That is a profoundly difficult judgment. Too much risk, and stability is compromised. Too little, and the UK risks regulating itself into irrelevance. Striking that balance is the job. But it requires clarity of intent.

Take the Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS). There is clear enthusiasm within the Bank for its potential. And rightly so, the idea of a controlled environment to test distributed ledger technologies in capital markets is exactly the kind of regulatory innovation the UK should be championing. Yet industry sentiment is, at best, mixed. Firms are asking a simple question: what is the return on participation? Sandbox engagement comes with real costs; time, capital, senior resource.

But too often, the outcomes feel ambiguous. Experimentation without a clear pathway to deployment is not a compelling proposition in a competitive global market. If the DSS is to succeed, it must move beyond being a safe space for testing. It must become a bridge to real-world application, delivering regulatory clarity, commercial viability, and ultimately, scale. Otherwise, we risk creating elegant frameworks that attract interest but fail to retain commitment. The same principle applies more broadly across digital assets policy.

The UK has all the ingredients to lead: deep capital markets, world-class regulatory institutions, and a thriving fintech ecosystem. What it now needs is regulatory confidence. Signals that innovation will not just be permitted, but enabled within clear and proportionate guardrails.

Over the past year and a half, I have engaged with firms across the spectrum, from early-stage innovators to global financial institutions. The message is consistent. They are not asking for a free pass. They are asking for certainty: a framework that is predictable, coherent, and internationally competitive. And that brings us back to Threadneedle Street.

The Bank of England, the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, has long been synonymous with prudence. That reputation is well earned, and it remains essential.

But prudence, in today’s context, must evolve. It cannot simply be about minimising risk; it must also be about enabling progress. Because here is the reality: innovation, if well-regulated, strengthens systems. It diversifies infrastructure, enhances resilience, and drives efficiency. The question is not whether digital assets will play a role in the future of finance, they already are. The question is where that future will be built.

So yes, the Old Lady must maintain her fiscal virtue. But she must also be ready, on occasion, to ‘show some leg’. That means leaning into leadership. Setting frameworks that others will look to. Moving with intent where the direction of travel is clear, even if every detail is not yet settled. It means recognising that in a global race for innovation, credibility is not just about caution, it is about action.

The evidence session was an important moment. It showed a central bank that is engaged, thoughtful, and alive to the challenges ahead. But the next phase will be defined not by consultation, but by execution.

The UK has a choice: to observe the evolution of digital finance, or to shape it. The market, quite clearly, is ready.

The developers also proposed relaunching the protocol before July “a leaner, perps-native exchange with an emphasis on security.”

“The Drift team is taking considered measures to ensure that users are made whole, and that Drift restores itself as the leading perpetuals DEX on Solana,” they said in an update posted on the exchange’s website.

“The team has made internal hard decisions to restructure and operate as lean as possible, focusing entirely on recovery and relaunch.”

But various elements of the recovery plan will have to be approved by Drift tokenholders — and, if all goes according to plan, victims could wait years to break even.

On April 1, hackers were able to trick Drift administrators into approving bogus transactions. The hackers made off with crypto worth $295 million, forcing Drift to suspend trading and other activity. Blockchain analysts have since said North Korea was likely behind the hack.

Should it pass, Drift’s proposal would lead to a lengthy recovery process for users who want to be fully compensated for their losses.

Users would be issued a “recovery token” representing a claim on a "recovery pool” that would be gradually filled by Drift revenue, as well as crypto committed by Tether and other organizations that offered help after the hack. The claim would be proportional to the amount that each user lost, according to an update on the Drift website.

Drift earned $19 million in revenue in 2025. At that rate, it could take nearly eight years for the recovery pool to reach $295 million, assuming Tether and other partners honour their promise to commit a combined $147 million to Drift recovery efforts.

Users who don’t want to wait would be able to redeem their recovery tokens under par as soon as the recovery pool tops $5 million in assets. Drift proposed seeding the pool with just under $4 million in stablecoins.

The recovery tokens would be transferrable, letting people bet on the success of Drift’s business model, which is changing dramatically in the wake of the hack.

According to the proposal, the new Drift would drop “earn” products that resemble high-risk, high-yield savings accounts, and focus on a perpetual futures exchange running on slimmed-down code — a change that would limit hackers’ opportunities to find exploitable bugs.

The protocol would accept fewer collateral assets and offer only the most popular and liquid assets for trading.

Drift would also delay work on a mobile application and a new liquidity model it had unveiled just three months earlier.

Its rebrand as a “security-first” exchange, administrators would be required to follow a formal security protocol that includes dedicated devices and quarterly security training sessions.

The proposal had little affect on the Drift token, which was trading just under $0.04 before and after Tuesday’s announcement.

“This will take time but the structure is in place, ecosystem partners are committed and the work is underway,” the proposal concluded.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

GM, Tim here.

Decentralised finance is notorious for being home to some pretty wacky ideas with dubious commercial viability.

Yet over the past year, developers have stumbled on one that not only works, but also happens to be quite profitable: letting users buy and sell virtual versions of trading cards.

Onchain marketplaces that allow users to speculate on the prices of Pokémon, One Piece, and sports cards have soared over the past year. They generated a combined $11 million in revenue last month, according to data from DefiLlama, generated on its new Pro dashboard.

Revenue on DeFi TCG marketplaces is up more than 9X year-over-year, with top marketplaces generating over $11M in April.

Chart created with DefiLlama Pro pic.twitter.com/3pUpFnQMhM

— DefiLlama.com (@DefiLlama) May 4, 2026

That’s no small sum for an idea that was basically unproven just over a year ago.

The success comes as trading cards — particularly Pokémon — continue their popularity. Nostalgia, financial speculation, and a post-pandemic boom in collectibles have caused prices to soar in recent years.

Pokémon cards, as measured through the Card Ladder Index, have produced a roughly 4,000% cumulative return since 2004, vastly outperforming the S&P 500, an index of the top 500 US stocks, which is up 513% over the same period.

Pokémon card factories are operating at maximum capacity. Despite producing over 10 billion cards annually, they cannot keep up with demand, resulting in ongoing shortages.

Packs of cards from popular sets now routinely resell for more than their recommended retail price, fuelling speculation from investors.

Logistical issues

For avid collectors, buying and selling trading cards comes with a host of logistical problems.

Like most markets for collectables, illiquidity makes it difficult to buy and sell at scale, and often involves additional costs such as auction and postage fees.

Those issues are exacerbated for those who want to invest larger amounts. It’s not uncommon for investors looking to play the trading card market to buy hundreds of the same card, or shipping pallets of unopened packs in the hope they will be worth more in the future.

So, it makes sense for investors who want to trade the red hot market to gravitate to DeFi platforms that offer exposure without having to hold onto the cards themselves.

Most platforms work similarly. Users send cards and boxes of sealed packs to the companies, who verify their authenticity, store them, and issue digital versions on blockchains like Solana and Polygon as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

It’s reminiscent of how gold exchange-traded funds made buying and selling the yellow metal cheaper and more accessible, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Many platforms also offer so-called gacha machines that mimic the experience of opening packs of cards. Users pay a set price and receive a random card in the machine, which could be of a higher value than the price paid, the platforms say.

Redemption delays

The question among both investors and those running onchain marketplaces is whether the trading card gravy train will continue.

Pokémon card prices have gone up a lot already. Charizard cards from the first ever set of Pokémon cards produced in 1999 can sell for up to $550,000 in perfect condition.

The same cards could be bought for between $1,500 and $2,000 around 10 years ago.

If prices start to fall, the NFTs that represent the cards could see steeper declines than the rest of the market.

Although platforms let users redeem their digital trading cards for real ones, there’s a delay in doing so — the cards have to be shipped to their owners, after all.

If investors rush to exit the market, they will likely be willing to sell the NFT cards for less than the current market rate to account for the delay.

Yet for now, the trading card mania shows little sign of slowing.

Top DeFi stories of the week

This week in DeFi governance

VOTE: World Liberty Financial supporters vote to unlock tokens for founders, team, and early investors

VOTE: Lido DAO votes on proposal to use first-loss mechanism to cover Kelp DAO-related losses

VOTE: Arbitrum DAO votes to approve release of Ether frozen following Kelp DAO hack

Post of the week

Crypto Twitter reacts as Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong cuts 700 jobs and boasts that non-technical employees at his company are using AI to write and ship code.

pic.twitter.com/wS9AkezYg2

— VKTR (@0xVKTR) May 5, 2026

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

Coinbase shares popped as much as 4% early on Tuesday morning after the flagship US crypto exchange announced it was slashing about 14% of its global workforce in a sweeping restructuring that refocuses the company around artificial intelligence.

CEO Brian Armstrong broke the news in an email to employees, citing two punishing forces: a reeling market still down about $1.5 trillion from its peak, and AI.

"Over the past year, I've watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks," Armstrong wrote in the email, which he reposted on X. "Non-technical teams are now shipping production code and many of our workflows are being automated."

“We’re fundamentally changing how we operate: rebuilding Coinbase as an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it,” he added.

As of December 31, Coinbase had 4,951 employees, according to its 2025 financial report. Based on that figure, the exchange's 14% job cut impacts 693 employees.

The move puts Coinbase in company with Meta, which is cutting roughly 10% of its workforce, and Microsoft, which is trimming headcount through a voluntary retirement programme. Across many high-flying tech companies, the logic has been the same.

The exchange expects to incur $50 million to $60 million in restructuring charges, mostly recognised in the second quarter. The market's reaction in early hours trading suggests investors view the cuts as a long-overdue reset.

Armstrong said he wants no more than five management layers below the CEO, leaders with up to 15 direct reports, and what he bills as "AI-native pods" — small, focused teams where a single person can combine the roles of engineer, designer, and product manager.

“The future is small, high context teams that can move quickly,” he said.

A familiar story

This is not Coinbase's first encounter with the axe.

The exchange has cut staff in every major crypto downturn since its launch in 2012, underscoring just how tightly its fortunes remain leashed to the price of Bitcoin and the mood of crypto markets.

The current downturn has been particularly bruising. Bitcoin is still down 35% from its October 2025 peak of $126,000, even as the S&P 500 reached an all-time high in April.

“We are adjusting early and deliberately to rebuild Coinbase to be lean,” Armstrong said.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com

Between 2022 and 2023, Uniswap’s decentralised autonomous organisation, or DAO, loaned out 12.5 million UNI to the nonprofit Uniswap Foundation and several top delegates in a bid to boost governance participation.

According to Erin Koen, the proposal’s author and governance lead at Uniswap Labs, the protocol’s governance is now much more active, meaning that the loaned tokens have served their purpose.

“Today, Uniswap’s governance environment looks very different,” Koen said.

“UNI holders have been actively delegating voting power, and since DUNI was established, passed proposals have averaged roughly 75 million votes in turnout, exceeding quorum by approximately 88%.”

DUNI, Uniswap’s Decentralized Unincorporated Nonprofit Association, is a legal entity that recognises onchain governance votes as legally binding and shields DAO members from personal liability for collective decisions.

Truly decentralised? 

The proposal to take back the loaned tokens comes as Uniswap Labs and the Uniswap Foundation work to address criticism that the protocol’s governance system isn’t as decentralised as it appears to be.

Critics have previously argued that the Uniswap Foundation holds too much influence. They say it often makes key decisions unilaterally or pushes proposals without sufficient community input.

Others lament how much of the decision-making at the DAO happens behind the scenes, and how large token holders and venture capital firms — in Uniswap’s case a16z crypto — dominate voting power, creating circumstances where smaller holders have little real say.

The situation has even attracted the attention of US Representatives.

Sean Casten, a Democrat from Illinois, questioned Uniswap DAO’s decentralisation during a hearing regarding the Clarity Act in June.

Misalignment issue 

In response, Uniswap Labs and the Uniswap Foundation authored a proposal aiming to align incentives across Uniswap Labs, the Foundation, and the DAO, which passed a DAO vote in December.

Its main objectives are to add fees to the Uniswap protocol and use the proceeds to buy UNI tokens and remove them from circulation, accelerate protocol growth, and to merge the Uniswap Labs and the Foundation, among other things.

That, in addition to other changes, such as setting up a legal entity for the DAO, incentivising governance participation, and reforming governance processes are all aimed at increasing governance decentralisation.

There are now 56 delegates with greater than 1 million UNI of voting power, according to data compiled by Snapshot, a DAO voting platform.

Taking back the loaned governance tokens also resolves a potential incentive misalignment, Koen said.

When the tokens were distributed, the Uniswap community selected delegates based on their participation in governance. However, it didn’t ensure alignment between delegates’ voting power and economic exposure.

In other words, delegates with little of their own skin in the game could potentially command an outsized amount of voting power in the DAO.

“The potential for this misalignment should not persist indefinitely when the original reason for implementing it is no longer a concern,” Koen said.

The vote to return the governance tokens to the DAO ends on May 8. So far, 53% of votes have been cast in favour, 46% voting to abstain, and a negligible amount against the proposal.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

The decentralised finance exchange processing $6 billion in daily derivatives volume launched its first outcome contracts over the weekend — and the early numbers turned heads, according to Hyunsu Jung, CEO of Hyperion DeFi.

Its first Bitcoin outcome market did roughly three times the volume of equivalent markets on Polymarket and Kalshi combined, Jung told DL News.

“This proves that having a shared liquidity layer is effective in converting users,” he said. "Binary markets is an obvious next step in building the full financial stack on Hyperliquid, which is meaningfully dominating crypto perpetuals and in the first half of 2026 has demonstrated the possibilities of 24/7 real-world asset trading.”

Hyperion DeFi is a US publicly-traded company that accumulates Hyperliquid's HYPE token.

The launch puts Hyperliquid in direct competiton with Polymarket and Kalshi — and, according to a note shared with DL News by Bernstein analysts Gautam Chhugani and his colleagues on Monday, the timing could hardly be more significant.

Bernstein has just extended its digital assets research coverage to include prediction markets as one of three trends it is tracking alongside tokenisation and stablecoins, a signal of how seriously Wall Street is taking the sector.

Fund managers circling

The Bernstein memo frames Hyperliquid's launch against a broader shift that is just beginning to register on institutional radar screens.

Prediction market contracts, Bernstein argues, give macro-focused funds a cleaner way to hedge event risk than traditional instruments. A foreign exchange option or commodity exposure introduces basis risk — the asset price may partially move before the event resolves.

But a binary contract defined as "Will the US impose tariffs above 25% on EU goods in 2026?" settles solely on the outcome, with the premium, maximum loss, and payoff known in advance, the analysts said.

Kalshi moved first on the institutional front. Last week it executed its first bespoke block trade, brokered by Greenlight Commodities, between a Houston-based environmental hedge fund and Jump Trading Group, tied to the clearing price at California's May carbon allowance auction. Clear Street, an institutional broker, has also partnered with Kalshi to become the first institutional futures commission merchant providing regulated clearing access to prediction markets for hedge funds.

Meanwhile, HIP-4, Hyperliquid's prediction product, inherits the platform’s institutional credentials directly.

FalconX launched prime brokerage margin financing for Hyperliquid in February, with cross-venue margining across Binance, OKX, Bybit, and Deribit against a single collateral pool. Ripple Prime, which clears over $3 trillion annually, added Hyperliquid as its first DeFi venue in the same month. Anchorage Digital, the only federally chartered US crypto bank, supports HYPE custody and staking.

What to watch

Jung says the milestones to track are volume and open interest growth, and which markets get added next. HIP-4 launched with Bitcoin price outcomes but is expected to expand to HYPE and Ether contracts, and to move beyond its current 15-minute timeframes.

Combined monthly volumes across Polymarket and Kalshi hit nearly $24 billion in April, according to Bernstein data. Kalshi now commands a 62% market share, up from 55% in January, driven by its dominance in sports betting, which accounts for roughly 72% of its volume.

Full permissionless deployment for third-party teams is expected around mid-June — timed to coincide with the FIFA World Cup, historically one of the highest-volume events in prediction market history. The 2026 World Cup is already Polymarket's second-largest market by all-time volume at $884 million.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com

Shares of the world's largest corporate Bitcoin holder have surged more than 50% over the past month, riding the top crypto’s climb past $80,000 as short sellers scramble for the exits and institutional money pours back in.

On Monday, MSTR jumped another 4% to nearly $184 per share, adding to a 7% surge on Friday. After-hours trading suggests the stock’s price has inched up at least another 2% ahead of Strategy’s first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday.

The rally comes amid renewed institutional demand. Bitcoin exchange-traded funds drew $827 million in the first two trading days of May alone, extending a two-month winning streak, DefiLlama data shows. Over $200 million in short positions were liquidated in a single day as the rally gathered pace.

Strategy shares are seen as a leveraged bet on Bitcoin, and the firm's stock price closely tracks the top crypto.

Bitcoin's rally above $80,000 is sound, according to Jake Kennis, senior research analyst at Nansen. He told DL News that the funding rate — a key measure of market temperature — sits at a healthy 0.00045% hourly, well below the overheated readings that typically precede a sharp correction.

"With $2.4 billion in open interest and daily perpetual volume of $3.4 billion outpacing spot turnover, derivatives are clearly playing a significant role in price discovery around this level," Kennis said. "The moderate funding rate and balanced buy/sell ratio don't indicate extreme leverage build-up that would suggest a major pullback."

Q1 earnings call

All eyes now turn to Strategy's first quarter financial results.

Consensus voices expect revenue of around $125 million, up from $115 million a year earlier, alongside an accounting loss tied to Bitcoin's price swings and financing costs. But investors are paying less attention to the income statement than to the capital markets machine Saylor has built underneath it.

Strategy has quietly transformed from a software company with a Bitcoin position into a financing vehicle built to convert market demand into Bitcoin exposure. The engine driving that machine is STRC — Strategy's Bitcoin-backed preferred stock, paying a variable dividend of around 11.5% annually — which has grown to $8.5 billion in notional value in under nine months.

"The world's $300 trillion credit market is a much bigger opportunity than the world's roughly $2 trillion Bitcoin market, and Strategy has built the first product to bridge the two," Michael Saylor, Strategy's founder and Executive Chairman, told the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas last week.

BlackRock's iShares Preferred & Income Securities ETF has already taken a $210 million position in STRC. Saylor says the instrument has financed the acquisition of roughly 77,000 Bitcoin so far this year — ten times the net inflow of all US spot Bitcoin ETFs combined over the same period.

“STRC is a battery that stores Bitcoin gains and distributes them over time,” said Strategy CEO Phong Le.

Strategy did pause its Bitcoin buying streak ahead of Tuesday's earnings — only the second such break this year, according to Saylor. Its most recent purchase added 3,273 Bitcoin at an average price of around $77,900.

Strategy is scheduled to release its first quarter financial results at 10 pm London time or 5 pm US Eastern time on Tuesday. Saylor has promised a live question-and-answer session, with notable guests to be announced.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 0.7% over the past 24 hours at $80,886.
• Ethereum is down 0.5% over the past few hours at $2,381.

What we’re reading

• Aave secures emergency hearing to void ‘catastrophic’ restraining order — DL News
• Clarity Act odds surge on stablecoin compromise, Coinbase support — DL News
• World Liberty Financial Quietly Sold Billions in Tokens as Early Investors Remained Locked Out — Unchained
• $80K: we got there. Now what? — Milk Road
• Ethereum devs huddled in the Arctic Circle to fix the network. Here’s what to know — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com

The hearing, scheduled by a federal judge in New York, is part of a fast-moving legal skirmish that has complicated an industry-wide effort to compensate the victims of an April 18 hack allegedly executed by North Korean hackers.

That exploit saw hackers make off with nearly $300 million in rsETH stolen from the Kelp DAO protocol. The hackers then used the stolen crypto as collateral to borrow other, more liquid assets on Aave, the largest protocol in decentralised finance.

But several organisations were able to freeze some of the stolen crypto before it could be laundered. Arbitrum DAO was the most successful, freezing crypto worth about $71 million.

Arbitrum DAO is poised to send that crypto to a recovery fund meant to compensate users affected by the hack. But other people who have been victimised by North Korea are now trying to claim the frozen assets, citing decade-old, multimillion-dollar legal judgments against the pariah nation.

On Friday evening, attorneys for those victims served Arbitrum DAO a restraining order forbidding the cooperative from transferring any “property interests of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

The victims include Han Kim and Yong Kim, relatives of a South Korean minister who was abducted and presumably killed by North Korean agents in 2000. Han Kim and Yong Kim secured a $330 million judgement against North Korea in US federal court in 2015, according to the restraining order.

On Monday, Aave stepped into the fray.

Aave LLC filed an emergency request, asking the court to throw out the restraining order “to avoid catastrophic injuries to the Aave Protocol, its users, and the DeFi system writ large.”

Aave was "rejecting the baseless claim that stolen property title belongs to the thief," founder Stani Kulechov wrote on X. "We will keep fighting for the DeFi community."

The victims “showed up, contending – based on conjecture from posts on the internet – that the thief was North Korea, and that by stealing the assets for a few hours, North Korea somehow became the rightful owner of those assets,” the company said in its filing.

“The Immobilized Assets do not belong to North Korea or any affiliated entities. Instead, the Immobilized Assets belong to the users of the Aave Protocol.”

Arbitrum DAO began voting on Thursday to transfer the assets to the recovery fund. That vote ends on May 7, a day after the emergency hearing.

“If the Immobilized Assets remain subject to a freeze and are not made available to restore value to the Aave Protocol users, the entire DeFi ecosystem risks being destabilized,” Aave LLC wrote.

Moreover, a freeze would create “unconscionable incentives,” according to the company.

“No one would dare to stop a thief from stealing funds or property if the reward for being a Good Samaritan was a legal battle,” it wrote.

In a statement on the Arbitrum DAO governance forum, the Arbitrum Foundation said on Monday it was “in active consultation with counsel to assess the situation.”

“Given the fluid nature of this matter, we are carefully evaluating potential next steps to ensure any response is measured, appropriate, and aligned with the long-term interests of the Arbitrum community,” the nonprofit wrote.

Judge Margaret Garnett, of the Southern District of New York, gave the plaintiffs until noon Tuesday to respond to Aave’s emergency motion. Both sides will make their case before the judge during an 11 am hearing on Wednesday.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

Christmas came early for the US crypto industry on Friday evening, when Punchbowl News reported that Senators had struck a deal limiting the payment of interest or yield on stablecoins.

Reactions ran the gamut.

Crypto investor Nic Carter said, simply, “The banks won.” Attorney Scott Johnsson, general counsel at Van Buren Capital, was more optimistic.

“This is fine,” he wrote on X. “It may not feel like it, but it is.”

But there was only one that really mattered.

“Mark it up,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote, seemingly signalling his support for a markup — a committee vote that could advance the bill.

The odds the Clarity Act passes in 2026 quickly jumped from 46% to 64% on Polymarket.

Recall that Armstrong single-handedly put the bill on ice back in January, when he pulled his support on the eve of a scheduled markup.

Armstrong said he was unhappy with the bill’s treatment of stablecoins, among other things. Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott postponed the markup, and negotiators went back to the table.

Notably, other crypto executives appeared unhappy with the decision.

Last year’s stablecoin legislation, the GENIUS Act, banned stablecoin issuers from paying yield or interest on customers’ digital dollars. The ban was motivated by banks’ fear that customers would abandon traditional checking and savings accounts for stablecoins, which often pay substantially higher interest rates.

But it was unclear whether the law banned third-party crypto companies, such as exchanges, from paying interest, and banks have lobbied lawmakers to close the supposed loophole via the Clarity Act.

January’s compromise banned companies from paying passive yield on stablecoins — but it allowed them to offer rewards or incentives on activities such as transactions, payments, transfers, remittances, and providing liquidity in DeFi protocols.

According to copies of the latest draft circulating online, not much has changed since.

The Clarity Act would ban interest or yield “that is economically or functionally equivalent to the payment of interest or yield on an interest-bearing bank deposit,” the text reads. “Rewards or incentives” on “bona fide” activities or transactions, however, are allowed.

That, of course, is rather vague. The bill would give US financial regulators one year to publish rules clarifying when, exactly, companies can reward stablecoin users.

Still, the industry celebrates the detente.

“Resolving the stablecoin yield question clears the path to a Senate Banking Committee markup and brings us meaningfully closer to comprehensive market structure legislation becoming law,” Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger said in a statement. “This agreement is a step in the right direction and we urge the Committee to move forward without delay.”

That could happen as soon as this month. But the clock’s ticking. The Senate’s draft will have to be reconciled with a version the House passed nearly one year ago, and legislative work is expected to grind to a halt as election season ramps up.

Scott sounded a positive note on Monday morning.

“We are making real progress on digital asset market legislation and restoring confidence in our economy,” he wrote on X. “@BankingGOP is nearing consensus, and is working toward a bipartisan markup in May to advance digital asset market structure.”

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out to him with tips at aleks@dlnews.com.

Gudtrip advertises itself as building a user-powered network that combines cannabis, Bitcoin, and artificial intelligence.

“Every hit earns crypto,” a tagline on the company’s website reads.

Customers who buy one of the company’s cannabis vape pens can connect it to an app, which rewards them with Bitcoin, and points for using the pen. “Checking-in” daily creates streaks which increase points earned by up to 200%.

Several researchers studying cannabis consumption who spoke to DL News said encouraging daily use is potentially dangerous and habit-forming, raising ethical concerns.

“Gamifying cannabis use? It certainly sounds like habit-formation is the goal,” Joshua Gowin, an associate professor who studies the effects of frequent cannabis use at the University of Colorado Anschutz, told DL News.

“Linking a reward to a puff/smoking session reinforces the behaviour, increasing the chance of escalating use and even developing an addiction,” Janna Cousijn, head of the Neuroscience of Addiction Lab at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, told DL News.

“It is potentially a very dangerous and unethical device that could stimulate the development of addiction,” she said.

A Gudtrip spokesperson told DL News the company is “deeply mindful” of the risks associated with cannabis products and that its product isn’t designed to encourage greater consumption.

Pushing the boundaries

In recent years, the crypto industry has become a hotbed for products that gamify finance, blur the lines between investing and gambling, and push the boundaries of what is allowed under current laws.

For example, blockchain-based prediction markets, platforms that let users bet on the outcomes of everything from sports and politics to whether the US government will confirm the existence of aliens, have surged into a $21 billion industry.

Many US states, gaming regulators, and lawmakers argue prediction markets are essentially gambling, a tightly regulated industry. Prediction market platforms contend that they are not, and are instead financial trading platforms.

Gudtrip, which also advertises that customers can invest their rewards using “open-source AI agent tools” in “blockchain-based strategies,” fits this crypto industry trend to a tee.

Gudtrip’s parent company, Puffpaw, is growing fast. After receiving $6 million in venture funding in 2024, the company says it has sold over 140,000 products, although this figure includes its more widespread nicotine-based products.

Ethical concerns

There’s a mountain of research that has tied heavy cannabis consumption, which includes using cannabis daily or almost every day, to a range of negative health effects.

They include increased risk of mental health disorders including anxiety, depression and psychosis, impairments in memory, attention and learning, respiratory problems, and even an elevated risk of heart attacks and strokes.

"This certainly raises ethical concerns"

“From a public health perspective, I would be concerned about any product designed to incentivise frequent cannabis use,” Francesca Filbey, a researcher who studies the long-term effects of cannabis use at the University of Texas at Dallas, told DL News.

“This certainly raises ethical concerns,” she said.

To be sure, many of the health impacts of using cannabis are reduced for those who use the drug only occasionally.

Several drug risk assessment studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals have found that cannabis use is less harmful than seven other popular drugs, including tobacco and alcohol.

Yet the more cannabis people use, the greater their risk of suffering adverse consequences, Tom Freeman, director of the Addiction and Mental Health Group, who specialises in cannabis’ mental health impacts and the therapeutic potential, told DL News.

The best way to manage risk is through careful and informed choices based on THC content and following safer use guidelines, Freeman said.

“Providing incentives for people who consume more will impair their ability to make choices in the best interests of their health, escalating their use and risk of harms,” he said.

Only points?

The Gudtrip spokesperson said the only financial reward in the product is Bitcoin, which is part of a “standard consumer loyalty programme,” and not scaled to, gated by, or otherwise associated with the level, frequency, or duration of cannabis consumption.

The points customers earn are “used solely for record-keeping in the app” and cannot be redeemed for cash, cryptocurrency, products, or anything else of monetary value, the spokesperson said.

“We believe that an adult in a legal market who has visibility into their own consumption is better positioned to avoid problematic use than one who does not,” the spokesperson said.

That’s at odds with information on the Gudtrip website, which tells potential customers that “every hit earns crypto,” and shows images of an app user earning a 200% “boost” after “checking-in” to the app consecutively for four days.

“In the old consumer model, users bought products and brands kept the upside. In the Gudtrip model, users help build the network and deserve to share in the value they create,” marketing copy on the Gudtrip website reads.

Gudtrip did not immediately respond to a request for comment asking it to address the inconsistencies between the information provided to customers on its website and the comments given to DL News.

What’s more, Gudtrip’s customers may have other reasons to believe points are not just a record-keeping tool.

In the crypto industry, issuing so-called points is widely understood as laying the groundwork for issuing a valuable crypto token.

In recent years, dozens of crypto projects have issued points, and at a later date have converted them into valuable crypto tokens. Those who earn points are often so sure that they will eventually be worth money that they are willing to buy and sell them on secondary markets.

Puffpaw, Gudtrip’s parent company, has explicitly told customers that it plans to launch a token in the future.

The Gudtrip spokesperson said the company does not plan to issue a token in connection with its product.

Legal status 

For other drugs and controlled substances in the US, industry players adhere to voluntary self-regulatory codes.

For example, in the alcohol industry, the Distilled Spirits Council’s Code of Responsible Practice explicitly requires that advertising and promotion “discourage excessive or abusive consumption,” not portray intoxication as acceptable, and avoid depicting drinking games or other activities that reward heavy drinking.

Cannabis, however, remains illegal at the federal level, making it more difficult to unite the industry and enforce best practices.

"California's financial and health authorities need to act against this insanity"

The National Cannabis Industry Association, the largest US nonprofit trade organisation representing cannabis businesses, did not respond to a request for comment.

Instead, states that have legalised cannabis come up with their own rules independently.

Currently, Gudtrip vape pens are only available in California, one of 25 US states to fully legalise cannabis for recreational use. California, unlike many other states, doesn't explicitly prohibit advertising or other forms of promotion that encourages excessive use of the drug.

Some states, such as Massachusetts, previously banned customer loyalty programmes for cannabis products to avoid encouraging overconsumption. These prohibitions were lifted on April 20.

“Paying people to use this stuff — literally paying them — is unacceptable,” Kevin Sabet, CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a non-profit that opposes the legalisation and commercialisation of cannabis, told DL News. “California's financial and health authorities need to act against this insanity.”

“The Department of Cannabis Control does not promote increased consumption of cannabis and encourages those who use cannabis to do so responsibly,” Jordan Traverso, deputy director of public affairs at the organisation, told DL News.

The Department of Cannabis Control, or DCC, licenses and regulates commercial cannabis activity in California.

“We were not previously familiar with the Gudtrip product but have reached out to the manufacturer to learn more about its features,” Traverso said.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

Last week, just over 100 core contributors gathered in Longyearbyen, on Norway's Svalbard archipelago — some 78 degrees north, where the sun never sets — for the Soldøgn interop, a week of intensive work on the Glamsterdam network upgrade.

By Friday, the team had locked in a post-Glamsterdam gas limit floor of 200 million, stabilised external block builder implementations, and finalised gas repricing numbers for EIP-8037.

"At their best, interop weeks can compress a month of asynchronous progress into each day," Ethereum Foundation researcher Tim Beiko wrote in a recap shared with developers on Friday.

The breakthrough lands as Ether trades at $2,377, still more than 50% below its August peak of $4,946. However, signs of hope are emerging. Ethereum has jumped 14% over the past month, CoinGecko data shows.

The 200 million gas limit target is notable because it determines how many transactions Ethereum can process per block. The higher the limit, the more activity the network can handle without congestion — and the stronger the case for Ethereum as the backbone of a global financial system.

Beiko billed it as one of the most productive weeks in recent memory for the Ethereum team.

Foundation sells, Bitmine buys

The Ethereum Foundation wasted no time translating its technical progress into operational runway.

On Friday, the Foundation completed a third over-the-counter sale of 10,000 Ether tokens to Bitmine Immersion Technologies — the largest Ethereum treasury company — at an average price of $2,292 per coin, bringing the total transaction value to roughly $23 million.

It is the third such deal between the two parties. In March, the Foundation sold Bitmine 5,000 ETH at around $2,043 per coin. Last Friday, another 10,000 ETH changed hands at $2,387. The Foundation has also conducted a separate 10,000 ETH sale to rival treasury firm Sharplink.

The money goes straight back into funding Ethereum's development, including research, grants, and the kind of work that just happened in Svalbard, the Foundation said.

But despite the price downturn, Bitmine, led by prominent Wall Street bull Tom Lee, is not flinching.

Earlier this week the company disclosed its largest Ethereum purchase of the year — 101,901 ETH worth roughly $235 million — bringing its total holdings above 5 million Ether and cementing its position as the dominant corporate accumulator of the asset.

Bitmine bought most of its Ethereum at much higher prices. At today's levels, the company is sitting on an unrealised loss of more than $6 billion.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com

On the first day of May alone, $630 million poured into US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, extending a two-month winning streak that made April the best month since October, DefiLlama data shows.

ETF inflows have become the dominant force behind Bitcoin’s ascent, Max Kahn, CEO of investment adviser Digital Wealth Partners, told DL News. They now act as “an increasingly important source of consistent buying pressure,” helping the asset hold higher levels as long as institutional appetite remains intact.

The institutional surge comes as Washington closes in on a legislative breakthrough. Senate Banking Committee chair Tim Scott told Fox Business on Friday that the Clarity Act — the landmark digital asset market structure bill — is heading for a bipartisan markup in May and a Senate floor vote soon after.

‘Red zone’

"We're in the red zone," Scott said, signalling the bill is nearing the Senate floor and that each procedural step strips away regulatory fog that has long restrained institutional capital.

“I just want to have thirteen of thirteen Republicans on board,” he said. “That makes it easier for us to have a bipartisan markup – in May is my hope – and we’ll get this thing to the floor of the Senate.”

Meanwhile, Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy, is already ahead of the curve. Shares of Strategy surged over 7% on Friday as Bitcoin clawed toward $80,000, rewarding investors who endured a brutal stretch.

At the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas last week, Saylor trained his sights beyond Bitcoin's price. His pitch centred on STRC — Strategy's Bitcoin-backed preferred stock — and a thesis that digital credit is set to reshape global capital markets.

"The world's $300 trillion credit market is a much bigger opportunity than the world's roughly $2 trillion Bitcoin market," Saylor told the audience. BlackRock's iShares Preferred & Income Securities ETF has already taken a $210 million position in STRC, which has grown to $8.5 billion in under nine months.

What comes next

The macro calendar for May is stacked.

Kevin Warsh's confirmation as the next Federal Reserve chair is imminent as Jerome Powell’s official term ends on May 15. Polymarket bettors put the odds of confirmation at 95%.

The US jobs report on Friday is the main event, according to economist Ed Yardeni. Unemployment is expected to tick down to 4.2%, with jobless claims pointing to a healthy labour market, he wrote.

Corporate earnings are also in focus — Palantir, AMD, McDonald's, and Arm all report this week. With 44% of S&P 500 companies already in, analysts now forecast 19.8% earnings growth for 2026, well ahead of recent years.

Meanwhile, Nine Federal Reserve officials are speaking this week, with investors parsing every word for clues on rates.

Inflation expectations are also due Thursday, with the New York Fed forecast to show a jump toward 4%.

Crypto market movers 

• Bitcoin is up 2.2% over the past 24 hours at $79,887.
• Ethereum is up 3% over the past few hours at $2,371.

What we’re reading 

• Anthropic’s new Mythos AI will hit crypto. Bitcoin investors don’t care, says Coinbase — DL News
• Crypto industry reels as April sees highest number of hacks ever — DL News
• New Bitcoin Wallet Offers Post-Quantum Protection Without a Fork — Unchained
• The AI margin trap — Milk Road
• DeFi lender Sky hits $124m revenue record. Yet token holders aren’t impressed — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com

That’s despite the epidemic of “disingenuous innovation” that is plaguing the digital assets industry, Diego Martin, CEO of Yellow Capital, told DL News, referring to grand promises widely made by crypto startup teams that are rarely fulfilled.

“Institutional investors typically wait for retail demand before taking a punt on innovation,” Martin said.

To be sure, fundraising in April fell some 75% from March, which was a blockbuster month that saw massive raises in the prediction market sector amid a shifting focus in the crypto industry.

“Trust is the primary barrier — and opportunity — to tap into, due to the nature of the technology we work with,” Martin said.

Still, marquee investors including German banking giant Deutsche Börse Group, Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm and Coinbase, all piled on capital into crypto companies including Kraken, OpenGradient, and Pixie Chess.

These are the top three raises in April.

Kraken, $200 million

Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, raised $200 million through a secondary share sale to Deutsche Börse.

The deal gives the German banking group a minority stake as it moves deeper into digital assets.

The move values Kraken at about $13.3 billion, down from $20 billion in late 2025.

The company made five acquisition deals in 2025. Kraken’s co-CEO Arjun Sethi told DL News in September that the firm had more transactions lined up.

Slash, $100 million

Neobanking platform Slash raised $100 million in a Series C round led by Ribbit Capital. Khosla Ventures and Goodwater Capital also backed the raise.

Slash provides banking tools for online businesses, including those using crypto.

The latest round pushes Slash into unicorn territory, valuing the company at over $1 billion and bringing total funding past $160 million.

New Enterprise Associates and Y Combinator also joined the round, marking their fourth investment in the company.

Pharos, $44 million 

Pharos raised $44 million in a Series A round backed by SNZ Holding, Chainlink, and Flow Traders, Coindesk reported. The company is building a Layer 1 blockchain focused on handling large-scale financial activity.

Pharos supports Ethereum-compatible applications, making it easier for crypto-native developers to use.

You’re reading the latest instalment of The Weekly Raise, our column covering fundraising deals across the crypto and DeFi spaces, powered by DefiLlama.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Over the past month, 29 crypto projects have suffered hacks or exploits, the highest monthly tally in the industry’s history, per DefiLlama data.

Among them were two standouts: The hacks of Solana-based exchange Drift, and Ethereum-based restaking app Kelp DAO, which resulted in a combined $579 million loss.

The situation has sparked a crisis of confidence among the industry’s most ardent believers and left them questioning whether the tradeoffs inherent in decentralised technology are worth the trouble.

In recent years, the number of crypto hacks — and the amounts stolen — have edged higher.

The fast-moving and experimental DeFi space, once notorious for exploits, was thought to have matured. But now it’s back in the limelight — and not for the right reasons.

“Right now, DeFi seems to be the primary target,” Michael Pearl, vice president of strategy at crypto security firm Cyvers, previously told DL News. “In general, everything has shifted now to hacking humans rather than hacking systems.”

Single points of failure  

The problem, according to Michael Egorov, founder of DeFi protocols Curve Finance and Yield Basis, is centralisation.

“We need to reduce the number of single points of failure as much as possible,” Egorov said in a statement shared with DL News. “The goal of DeFi design should be to minimise human-centric points of failure, not add to them.”

The attacks on Drift and Kelp DAO both ultimately came down to centralised weak points.

North Korean hackers compromised two Drift employees through an elaborate social engineering campaign. This gave the hackers the power to make admin changes to the protocol, allowing them to steal some $285 million from users.

As for Kelp DAO, the instance of the LayerZero crypto bridge the protocol relied on was configured to only require a single operator, which hackers exploited to steal $273 million.

Yet centralisation is not the only way DeFi protocols are getting caught out.

Last month, 24 out of the 29 incidents — almost 83% — were caused by code bugs.

Crypto security experts previously told DL News that advances in artificial intelligence are making it cheaper, easier, and faster for hackers to attack DeFi protocols.

Bad actors are now using the large language models that power AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude to search through thousands of lines of code a second. Before, they had to do so manually.

Despite code bugs being the root cause of the majority of hacks, they only accounted for $42 million of April’s $635 million in losses — around 6.6%.

Not the biggest loss 

Despite a record 29 hacks, April wasn’t the worst month by the amount of funds lost.

In December 2020, hackers reportedly stole some $3.5 billion.

Yet this month is often considered an outlier because the vast majority of that figure came from the hack of wallets belonging to LuBian, a Bitcoin mining company.

Neither LuBian nor the suspected hacker have ever publicly acknowledged the breach, and it remained unnoticed for almost five years.

Arkham Intelligence, the blockchain data platform that discovered the hack, said it was likely due to LuBian's use of a flawed private key generation algorithm that left it susceptible to brute-force attacks.

The next biggest loss came in February last year when North Korean hackers swiped $1.5 billion from crypto exchange Bybit.

Additionally, hackers also stole slightly more than in April in August 2021, March 2022 and October 2022 respectively.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

On Thursday, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told Congress that Bitcoin projects inside the Pentagon are “classified and ongoing,” while stressing that the top crypto is a tool for American power.

Hegseth delivered the comments in front of the House Armed Services Committee, responding to questions about whether the US is securing a strategic advantage in technology.

“I am a long enthusiast of Bitcoin and crypto potential,” he said. “A lot of the things we are doing, enabling it or defeating it, are classified efforts that are ongoing inside our department, which do provide us a lot of leverage in a lot of different scenarios.”

Hegseth’s endorsement elevates Bitcoin into the realm of geopolitical strategy at a time when Russia and China are expanding their roles in mining and using digital assets to bypass US sanctions.

As rival powers lean on crypto to settle energy trades and reduce dependence on the dollar amid geopolitical turmoil, Washington’s embrace signals that Bitcoin is now part of the global balance-of-power conversation.

Still, Bitcoin’s price has not budged. The top crypto is down some 40% from its October peak of $126,000 even as the S&P 500 and other asset classes blaze record highs amid investor optimism.

Hegseth himself has long been a backer of digital assets. In 2025, his financial filings showed that he was holding Bitcoin.

Last week, Admiral Samuel Paparo Jr., head of US Indo-Pacific Command, confirmed that the military runs a live Bitcoin node and is testing the protocol operationally.

“We’re not mining Bitcoin,” Paparo said. “We’re using it to monitor.”

Crypto x geopolitics 

The geopolitical backdrop sharpens the stakes.

Russia now accounts for roughly 16% of global Bitcoin mining, making it the second-largest mining hub globally, according to an FT analysis from February.

China, despite its 2021 domestic ban, still represents nearly 12% of global mining activity through underground and offshore operations, the study said.

Both countries increasingly explore digital assets to settle energy transactions and soften the blow of US-led financial sanctions.

During the House Armed Services Committee hearing, Texas Republican Lance Gooden said Bitcoin has evolved “from a fringe asset into a matter of national security.”

To back up the point, Gooden pointed to reports of Iran demanding Bitcoin for transit access, North Korea-linked ransomware activity, and China’s accumulation strategies.

Hegseth echoed that framing, positioning Bitcoin as a counterweight to what he described as China’s digital control model.

In 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a US strategic Bitcoin reserve seeded with approximately 200,000 government-held coins from forfeitures.

Crypto market movers 

• Bitcoin is up 1.8% over the past 24 hours at $77,413.
• Ethereum is up 1.2% over the past few hours at $2,285.

What we’re reading 

• Anthropic’s new Mythos AI will hit crypto. Bitcoin investors don’t care, says Coinbase — DL News
• Banks are fighting a ‘sideshow’ as Clarity Act stalls. Will it matter? — DL News
• New Bitcoin Wallet Offers Post-Quantum Protection Without a Fork — Unchained
• The AI margin trap — Milk Road
• Democrat Senators question Howard Lutnick over Tether ties — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com

Anthropic’s new Claude Mythos AI model is able to exploit security vulnerabilities autonomously and therefore threatens crypto markets, according to a second-quarter outlook by Coinbase and Classnode. In theory, it could hammer key weak points across protocols, exchanges, and infrastructure.

But that’s not shaking institutional investors’ confidence in Bitcoin, David Duong, Coinbase’s global head of investment research said in a note shared with DL News.

He highlighted that three‑quarters of institutions “still see Bitcoin as undervalued” despite the short-term fears clouding the market’s sentiment.

Duong’s confidence comes as crypto has struggled to keep up with other asset classes like stocks or gold. Bitcoin is still down nearly 40% from its October peak while the S&P 500 printed a new record in April. It is currently trading at $77,000 after rallying some 13% over the past month.

“Our outlook for the next quarter remains neutral, but there are early signs the market may be finding a floor,” Duong said. “Much of the speculative activity has been flushed out.”

Exchange-traded fund inflow data backs him up. April has been the best month since October as traders poured just under $2 billion into Bitcoin ETFs over the past 30 days, DefiLlama data shows.

How dangerous is Mythos?

Major crypto exchanges including Coinbase and Binance are moving quickly to get access to Mythos, The Information reported on 14 April.

The model has been kept limited to a small group of big tech partners because of concerns about its potential misuse. Anthropic says it has not set a public release date because of how powerful the system is.

The urgency comes from what the model can do, at least theoretically.

Claude Mythos is said to be able to find and exploit “zero-day” bugs — hidden security flaws that developers do not yet know about — across operating systems and web browsers.

While major exchanges look to use the AI to strengthen their defences, much of the crypto industry does not have access.

Deddy Lavid, head of cybersecurity firm Cyvers Alert, told DL News in April that the risks are serious. If AI can find weaknesses across the internet at scale, crypto could be one of the first sectors hit. That is because the industry relies heavily on browsers, wallets, and open-source tools that are directly linked to moving money.

The potential damage could be large. The crypto industry already lost about $3.4 billion to hacks and attacks in 2025, according to Chainalysis.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

The Senate joined several other organisations that have banned employees from trading on the platforms to avoid conflicts of interest. Last week, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker banned state employees from using insider information to bet on prediction markets. A day earlier, National Public Radio issued a similar directive to its editorial employees.

"Serving in Congress is an honor, not a side hustle," Senator Bernie Moreno, a Republican from Ohio and the bill's sponsor, said in a statement on X. "Americans deserve to know that their leaders are here for the right reason!"

The resolution approved by senators on Thursday changes the chamber's rules, and violations are policed by its members. It does not have the force of law, and it does not need to be approved by the House of Representatives or signed by the president.

The resolution comes as bills to regulate prediction markets flood Congress.

Ritchie Torres, a New York Representative, presented the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026 in January to block federal officials from trading on prediction markets. In March, Democratic senators Jeff Merkley and Amy Klobuchar filed a bill to formally prohibit senior members of the executive branch from trading on prediction markets.

A bipartisan bill from Representatives Blake Moore of Utah and Salud Carbajal of California aims to rein in insider trading involving sensitive military secrets and democratic processes.

Other bills seek to ban prediction markets' ability to offer sports betting or bets that reference terrorism, assassination, war or the death of an individual.

Lawmakers began to scrutinise prediction markets after anonymous bettors began making successful, lucrative trades just moments before major announcements, raising suspicion that insiders were profiting off nonpublic information.

Last week, the US Department of Justice charged someone with doing just that.

Prosecutors alleged US Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke used knowledge of the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to profit from several markets on Polymarket.

Van Dyke, 38, was involved in planning and executing Maduro’s removal, known as Operation Absolute Resolve. He allegedly made more than $404,000 in illicit profits, according to a separate, civil complaint from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Earlier this month, US Senator Richard Blumenthal accused Polymarket of letting users profit off of national security secrets and slammed it for opening a market that let users bet on the rescue of a US soldier stranded in Iran.

“Polymarket operates in full compliance with applicable law, and our insider trading rules are the exact lines that the CFTC and courts draw for derivatives markets,” Olivia Chalos, Polymarket’s deputy chief legal officer, wrote in response on X.

She added that the platform shares Blumenthal’s “commitment to national security and market integrity.”

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out to him with tips at aleks@dlnews.com.

A trust benefitting Lutnick’s four children borrowed from Tether in October, just as Lutnick sold them his multibillion-dollar stake in finance giant Cantor Fitzgerald, Bloomberg reported last month.

Lutnick’s stake in Cantor Fitzgerald was reportedly sold to multiple trusts that benefit his children. But the trust that borrowed from Tether holds more than half the equity in Cantor, according to Bloomberg. Moreover, the loan was reportedly backed by “all assets” in the trust.

“If reports of this loan are accurate, it would raise serious questions about your relationship with Tether and the company’s influence on your policy decisions,” Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden wrote in their letter, dated April 29.

“We want to ensure that Tether has not sought to bribe or otherwise exert control or influence over you.”

Tether and the Department of Commerce did not immediately respond to DL News’ requests for comment.

The letter is the latest example of Democrats using crypto as a cudgel against President Donald Trump and his allies, many of whom have ties to the industry. Democrats argue those ties pose conflicts of interest, and have raised the issue at virtually every hearing over crypto legislation since Trump began his second term as president.

Lutnick has a long history with Tether.

He was the longtime chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a New York financial services firm. Cantor manages the billions in US Treasury bonds that back USDT, Tether’s stablecoin.

The billionaire hasn’t just done business with Tether — he’s personally vouched for the firm, which has faced speculation that USDT isn’t fully backed by high-quality reserve assets.

“There’s a company that I like called Tether,” Lutnick said in a televised interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2024. “From what we’ve seen, and we did a lot of work, they have the money they say they have.”

When he became Commerce Secretary in February 2025, he agreed to divest from his stake in Cantor. He completed his divestiture in October of that year.

“This document raises questions about whether Tether may have helped provide your children with the capital needed to purchase your stake in Cantor Fitzgerald, and in return, secured an interest in your children’s assets,” Warren and Wyden wrote.

The senators asked Lutnick whether Tether’s loan financed his divestiture from Cantor, whether he had a role in "procuring, soliciting, and/or negotiating the loan," the loan's size and terms, and whether he had any contact with Tether or its executives since he became Commerce Secretary.

Tether and the Department of Commerce did not immediately respond to DL News’ requests for comment.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out to him with tips at aleks@dlnews.com.

On Thursday, the layer 2 blockchain, which lists Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin among its early investors, launched its MEGA token, airdropping some 500 million tokens to those who bought them during the project’s October public token sale.

The token began trading at 11 am London time and initially rose to an all-time high of $0.38, according to CoinGecko data.

But it quickly began to sell off, dropping some 55% to trade at around $0.17.

Despite the volatility, those who bought the token during the public sale are still in profit. MegaETH sold the tokens at a clearing price of $0.0999 each, raising just under $50 million.

The project also sold 500 million tokens via a $10 million funding round on Echo, the early stage investing platform, at $0.02 each.

MegaETH’s wobbly launch comes as investor appetite for new crypto tokens dwindles.

The crypto market has been in the lurch since October, when it experienced a huge, structural crash that triggered over $19 billion in leverage liquidations.

Since then, investors' interest has been mostly limited to established cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin.

Slow start 

MegaETH is an Ethereum layer 2 network which touts itself as the first “real-time blockchain” capable of over 100,000 transactions per second.

The project previously secured $30 million in venture funding, almost $28 million by selling NFTs, and another $50 million selling tokens, bringing its total raise to around $108 million.

Yet despite the huge amount of funding, MegaETH has been slow to take off.

After launching in February, the blockchain has only seen $314 million in deposits to DeFi protocols, with top DeFi lender Aave accounting for just over 71% of its total deposits, per DefiLlama data.

Ethereum, the biggest blockchain for DeFi, hosts some $63 billion of deposits to protocols.

MegaETH isn’t the only hyped-up blockchain to see its token fall after launch.

Plasma, a high‑performance blockchain built for stablecoin payments, launched its XPL token in September. After a brief rally that saw the token hit an all-time high of $1.68, it began to fall. The token now trades at around $0.09 — a 94% drawdown.

Monad, another blockchain designed for extreme speed and scalability, launched its token in November. It’s down some 43% from its all-time high set shortly after its launch.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

The cryptocurrency is intimately linked to Ripple, the company whose founders developed it, and the venture’s fortunes.

But despite Ripple having notched several big wins over the past year, XRP is still trading 62% below its $3.65 record high from July.

“XRP is basically being held back by the same two forces that have capped most large-cap alts in this regime: macro noise and flow quality,” Louis De Backer, crypto trading analyst at financial services platform Marex, told DL News.

His comments come as the US’ conflict with Iran weighs on the global market. With talks between Washington and Tehran at a standstill, the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz has catapulted the commodity’s price above $114 per barrel.

Elevated energy prices make it increasingly unlikely that the Federal Reserve and other central banks will cut interest rates. High interest rates are seen as a headwind for cryptocurrency prices.

“With energy at four-year highs and the Fed messaging more divided, risk budgets stay tight and investors default to BTC first, then ETH,” De Backer said. “In that tape, XRP tends to behave like beta, it moves with the complex but struggles to attract fresh standalone demand.”

If the macroeconomic environment was to calm down, that would enable traders to move beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum and start to trade with altcoins like XRP, De Backer said.

“The second constraint is positioning versus spot depth,” De Backer said. “When liquidity is thin and derivatives flows dominate, moves in XRP can be sharp but they often fade. You need consistent spot buying to turn a push into a trend, otherwise it remains range-bound and reactive.”

For the Ripple-linked cryptocurrency to rally, it needs to break out of its current level of trading between $1.35 and $1.45 and hold the new, higher level for longer, he added.

“In short, XRP isn’t broken,” De Backer said. “It’s just stuck in a market that is still trading macro first and rewarding the deepest, most liquid exposures. When that pressure eases and spot flows show up, XRP can move quickly.”

Ripple’s successes 

Ripple has been on a tear of late.

The company has ended its long-running legal feud with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, seen President Donald Trump include XRP in a proposed strategic digital reserve, signed a deal with one of South Korea’s biggest insurance companies, and has made a number of acquisitions.

In March, Ripple achieved a $50 billion valuation, according to reports. That’s more than double the market capitalisation of stablecoin giant Circle.

XRP exchange-traded funds launched in November have mostly seen positive inflows, according to Coinglass.

Yet, even despite the prospect of global tension easing the strain on markets, not everyone is bullish that XRP will ever reclaim its former glory.

“I’m just not convinced that in this marketplace, XRP is going to succeed at regaining the stature that it once had, which is sad and unfortunate,” Ric Edelman, founder of Edelman Financial Engines, told DL News in March.

Polymarket punters share that sentiment, at least in the short term. Betters on the prediction market give XRP a 13% chance of hitting $3.60 before the end of the year. Conversely, they give it a 61% chance of hitting $1 before January 1.

Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip. Email him at eric@dlnews.com.

The Democrat senator’s comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported that two men linked to AB were sanctioned by the Trump administration for their alleged ties to the Prince Group. The Prince Group is accused of running crypto scam compounds and human trafficking operations out of Cambodia.

The AB network has not been accused of criminality and has removed the men from the project. There is no suggestion that illicit funds flowed into the resort project the two men were involved with, per Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and Guardian Australia's reporting from earlier in April. The two men have not been charged with any crime.

“As the Trump family puts themselves first, Congress needs to ensure that digital asset legislation protects our national security,” Warren said in a Thursday X post.

The Massachusetts senator’s comments highlight how US President Donald Trump’s political rivals are increasingly using crypto to attack him and his political allies ahead of the crucial midterm elections in November.

It comes as the crypto industry has spent over $319 million to influence the 2026 elections, according to Follow The Crypto.

For World Liberty Financial, The Wall Street Journal report marks another setback. Over the past few weeks, it has found itself embroiled in a legal battle with Justin Sun, a crypto mogul and one of the firm’s biggest supporters.

World Liberty Financial was launched in 2024 and co-founded by various members of Trump’s family, namely his three sons, as well as the sons of billionaire real estate developer Steve Witkoff, who serves as the White House’s special envoy to the Middle East.

The White House and World Liberty Financial have said that Trump and Witkoff have no role in the company’s decision-making.

What is AB?

In November, AB announced a collaboration with the Trump family’s project that would see World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin USD1 deployed on the AB Chain.

However, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the controlling shareholder and general manager of one of its projects — a planned blockchain-themed resort in Timor-Leste — had been led by two men sanctioned by the US over their alleged links to the Prince Group.

In November, Prince Group said in a statement that the firm categorically rejects the notion that it engaged in any unlawful activity.

Prince Group told The Wall Street Journal that neither its founder nor the group has any connection with AB or Timor-Leste or any activity in the country.

A lawyer for World Liberty Financial told The Wall Street Journal that it has never had any association or relationship with the sanctioned individuals and that it had no knowledge of the planned resort when it announced its arrangement with AB.

The arrangement wasn’t a partnership but a “limited non-exclusive technology integration” and that the due diligence World Liberty Financial conducted was proportional with the nature of the arrangement, the lawyer told The Wall Street Journal. The Trump family’s crypto project didn’t identify any sanctioned individuals, he said.

"Claims attempting to link World Liberty Financial with sanctioned individuals are unfounded and untrue," World Liberty Financial lawyers told OCCRP and Guardian Australia earlier in April. "[World Liberty Financial] has no relationship or association with any of these sanctioned individuals or the Timor-Leste project.”

An AB spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that the arrangement with World Liberty Financial wasn’t related to the sanctioned men as the planned resort was an independent entity. He said that AB terminated a preliminary agreement with the project after the US sanctions were announced.

The AB spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that it informed World Liberty Financial about the men when the company approached AB about the matter.

The general manager of the planned resort told The Wall Street Journal that he had never had any business dealings with the Prince Group.

Lawyers of the controlling shareholder of the project, have previously said that he wasn’t affiliated with the Prince Group, The Wall Street Journal reported.

World Liberty Financial, AB and Prince Group didn’t immediately respond to DL News’ requests for comment. DL News could not immediately reach the two sanctioned men for comment.

Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email at eric@dlnews.com.

On Wednesday, the wallet sent some $13.5 million worth of Ether tokens to Tornado Cash, a popular tool for laundering stolen crypto, onchain records show.

It’s not clear if Medjedovic himself is behind the transactions. The hacker has previously been accused of conspiring with another person to move stolen funds.

“It’s concerning to see a threat actor act with such confidence after exploiting multiple victims,” Specter, a pseudonymous blockchain investigator who has tracked Medjedovic’s onchain activity, said.

“Hopefully, he is apprehended and held accountable.”

Between 2021 and 2023, Medjedovic allegedly stole approximately $65 million by exploiting code bugs in two decentralised finance protocols: Indexed Finance and Kyberswap.

In February last year, Medjedovic was charged with wire fraud, computer hacking and attempted extortion by the US Department of Justice in connection with the two hacks.

Yet Medjedovic claims he’s innocent. He doesn’t deny his involvement, but argues that his actions were legitimate trades that exploited how the protocols’ code was written. This view is often referred to as “code is law” by industry insiders.

The recent activity brings the total amount of money laundered from Medjedovic’s hacks to almost $25 million.

Who is Andean Medjedovic?

Medjedovic, a Canadian national, is regarded as a former maths prodigy, having graduated high school at age 14.

He enrolled at the University of Waterloo, the same university attended by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. He completed an undergraduate degree in pure mathematics in three years compared to the usual four, and went on to complete a master’s degree in just one year.

Shortly after graduating, Medjedovic was identified in connection with the $16 million Indexed Finance hack in October 2021 through a seemingly trivial digital breadcrumb.

In a careless moment of vanity, he edited — under a user name associated with him — a Wikipedia page for a Canadian TV show he’d once appeared on and added himself to the list of show’s notable alumni as a “notable mathematician.”

Medjedovic had previously used that same user name to enter a competitive programming event, where he used wallets connected to those that hacked Indexed Finance. That was enough to connect the dots between his real identity and the heist. But it wasn’t enough to bring him to justice.

Medjedovic went on the run in December 2021 after a judge in Ontario issued an arrest warrant when he failed to show up for a court appearance.

On the run 

In early 2023, Medjedovic told DL News he was still on the run and living on an island which he declined to name. During conversations, he repeatedly steered the conversation towards his social views: He disparaged women and made numerous racist comments.

Medjedovic also claimed that he had switched over to being a “whitehat” — an ethical computer security expert who hacks into systems with permission to identify vulnerabilities, strengthen security, and prevent malicious attacks.

Yet months later, wallets tied to the Indexed Finance hack began receiving funds from those used in the $48 million Kyperswap hack, linking Medjedovic to the more recent theft as well.

The next time Medjedovic appeared in public records was when he was arrested in Serbia in 2024 on a warrant from the Netherlands, which accused him of being behind the two crypto hacks.

Medjedovic denied the charges and was released in November that year due to insufficient evidence.

The Belgrade Higher Court’s decision said that Dutch prosecutors had not sufficiently proven Medjedovic was the perpetrator of the hacks, and that even if he was, those crimes carried too light a sentence domestically to be worthy of extradition.

Presidential pardon?

On February 20, just over a year after the DoJ indictment, legal filings showed Medjedovic had retained lobbying and government relations firm JM Burkman & Associates with the goal of seeking a presidential pardon.

The filings show Medjedovic paid $300,000 up front for six months of services.

The lobbying firm said it plans to argue that Medjedovic’s case should be dismissed because similar conduct is usually left to regulators to evaluate, similar cases have been dismissed or resolved favorably in the past year, and because the case has little, if any, connection to the US.

In March last year, the US Securities and Exchanges Commission dismissed charges against BitClout founder Nader Al-Naji. In July 2024, Al-Naji was charged by the DoJ and the SEC for fraud and selling unregistered securities, with accusations that he misused $7 million in investor funds for personal luxury expenses.

In October, Roger Ver, an entrepreneur and Bitcoin investor, entered a deferred prosecution agreement with the DoJ. Ver paid the IRS nearly $50 million in back taxes, penalties, and interest stemming from his failure to properly report his Bitcoin holdings on tax returns. The government dismissed the indictment against him.

Additionally, at least seven more SEC enforcement actions involving crypto assets have been dismissed since Trump took office last year.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

At the heart of the forecast is continued expansion in decentralised finance lending via stablecoins, which the British bank views as rails enabling real-world assets such as stocks, bonds, commodities, and other funds to migrate onchain.

“All assets and infrastructure exist on the same ledger and can therefore interact without barriers,” Geoffrey Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, wrote in a note shared with DL News.

Kendrick’s bullish call comes amid major turbulence in the DeFi space that has shaken investors’ onchain confidence.

DeFi rebound

Earlier in April, a nearly $300 million exploit of the Ethereum liquid restaking protocol KelpDAO triggered a bank run on the decentralised lending platform Aave.

Aave lost $17 billion in deposits and $5.5 billion in active loans as panic spread, in what Kendrick calls “one of the most severe DeFi shocks in recent memory.”

But rather than fracturing, the DeFi community coordinated. A coalition of DeFi protocols and companies raised more than $300 million to stabilise the system and restore backing ratios.

While the hack exposed vulnerabilities and dented confidence, Kendrick argues it does not derail the core growth engine of tokenisation.

Rapid industry stabilisation efforts and structural upgrades reinforce the long-term case for DeFi banking and stablecoin liquidity — the twin pillars supporting a projected $2 trillion real world asset market by 2028.

Onchain banking boom

Kendrick said he expects a DeFi banking bonanza.

Lending in DeFi lowers the cost of capital because everything is built on “composability” and works more seamlessly than in traditional finance.

In simple terms, one asset can do several jobs at once. It can earn returns, be used as collateral for a loan, and still stay available to trade. This can increase overall returns without taking on more risk, according to the report.

In traditional finance, achieving that same multi-use profile requires capital to sit across separate intermediaries such as brokers, banks, and custodians, increasing cost and friction.

Several parts of DeFi make this far more efficient, according to Kendrick. Lending platforms let users earn returns and take out loans. Liquid staking allows assets to stay usable even while they are staked. Decentralised exchanges provide the liquidity needed for trading.

“Lending protocols are the central focus of this activity,” Kendrick said. “Without them, there would be no connection across multi-use activities.”

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com

Traders digested an unusually divided Fed decision to hold rates and the prospect of policy conflict under incoming chair Kevin Warsh, Kraken’s chief economist Thomas Perfumo said in a note shared with DL News.

“The absence of a clean handoff to Warsh, who is nearing Senate confirmation as chair, suggests the potential for discord over policy at the Fed,” Perfumo said.

Bitcoin’s pullback comes as the market weighs internal Fed discord at a time when traders are pricing roughly 90% odds of rates holding steady through year-end. That dynamic — a messy transition rather than a clean handoff — is emerging as a net negative for crypto and other growth assets.

“The vote itself was a loud crack in the Powell-era consensus, with four dissents, the most on a single decision since October 1992,” Perfumo said.

Three officials dissented over what they viewed as an “easing bias” in the central bank’s policy. Warsh has pledged to cut rates quickly, but Powell emphasised that inflation risks are rising, particularly as Brent crude still trades above $100 per barrel amid stalled US-Iran negotiations.

The tension showed up fast in the crypto exchange-traded fund space. Traders dumped $138 million in spot Bitcoin ETFs following the meeting, reversing part of April’s recovery, DefiLlama data shows.

Still, April has been the best month since October. Traders have poured just under $2 billion into Bitcoin ETFs this month.

Butchered handoff?

The split exposed a Fed no longer marching in lockstep as Powell prepares to step down on May 15.

“Powell's indication that he'll stay on as a board governor past his term as chair, albeit with a low profile, complicates the balance of power,” Perfumo said.

Powell confirmed at his press conference that he intends to remain a voting member of the Fed’s Board of Governors after his term as chair ends.

The decision carries little precedent. Outgoing chairs typically leave the institution.

Meanwhile, Warsh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Powell, cleared the Senate Banking Committee later on Wednesday. A final confirmation vote is expected soon.

Powell insisted he has no desire to act as a “shadow chair.” Yet his continued presence as a voting governor potentially limits Warsh’s freedom to reshape the institution.

Powell, who was also installed by Trump during his first term in the Oval Office, has clashed with the president for months over interest rates. Earlier in April, Trump threatened to fire Powell if he does not go peacefully.

“I had long planned to retire,” Powell said. “The things that have happened in the last three months have left me no choice but to stay.”

Crypto market movers 

• Bitcoin is down 1.6% over the past 24 hours at $75,731.
• Ethereum is down 3.1% over the past few hours at $2,251.

What we’re reading 

• Senators advance Warsh nomination after DOJ drops Fed chair probe — DL News
• Banks are fighting a ‘sideshow’ as Clarity Act stalls. Will it matter? — DL News
• New Bitcoin Wallet Offers Post-Quantum Protection Without a Fork — Unchained
• The AI margin trap — Milk Road
• DeFi lender Sky hits $124m revenue record. Yet token holders aren’t impressed — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com

On Tuesday, a federal judge said the claim was “baseless,” and denied the former billionaire’s request for a new trial.

It was a severe, if unsurprising blow to Bankman-Fried’s long-shot attempts to reverse a 2023 conviction on several counts of fraud and to escape a 25-year prison sentence.

In addition to his request for a new trial, Bankman-Fried has appealed his conviction and waged a desperate campaign to secure a presidential pardon. According to news reports, President Donald Trump is not expected to pardon the disgraced crypto entrepreneur. A decision in his appeal, meanwhile, is expected in the coming weeks.

Missed deadlines 

Earlier this month, Bankman-Fried missed two deadlines set by the court. One required a response to prosecutors’ nearly 50-page letter opposing his request for a new trial. Another required his avowal that he was, as he claimed, representing himself, a request the judge had made after prosecutors noted there were signs Bankman-Fried had received outside help.

In a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan filed on April 22 — a week after both deadlines had passed — Bankman-Fried said he was the “ultimate author” of his letter requesting a new trial.

But he also asked for permission to withdraw the request “without prejudice,” a move that would allow him to request a new trial at a later date.

“I do not believe I will get a fair hearing on this topic in front of you,” he wrote the judge.

Kaplan presided over Bankman-Fried’s 2023 trial, and the former billionaire has complained that the judge was biased toward the prosecution.

That complaint was first raised in September 2024, when Bankman-Fried appealed his conviction and requested that any new trial go before a different judge. That appeal went before a three-judge panel last November.

“The trial of Sam Bankman-Fried was fundamentally unfair, because the jury only got to hear one side of the story — the prosecutors’ side,” his attorney, Alexandra Shapiro, told the panel.

“The prosecutors proclaimed that billions had been lost forever. This was false.”

The outcome of that appeal is still pending. In his April 22 letter, Bankman-Fried said he would consider filing another request for a new trial after the appellate judges make their decision.

A scathing order

That won’t be happening, Kaplan said in his scathing order on Tuesday.

In addition to rejecting Bankman-Fried’s request for a new trial, the judge rejected his request “with prejudice,” barring him from filing a similar request in the future.

If Bankman-Fried wanted to withdraw the request because the judge was biased, then he shouldn’t have made the request in the first place, Kaplan wrote.

Moreover, the judge wasn’t convinced by Bankman-Fried’s claim he had found new, exonerating evidence.

“Bankman-Fried’s motion is based on three supposedly ‘newly discovered’ witnesses whose predicted testimony, he contends, warrants a new trial,” Kaplan wrote.

Hogwash, the judge said.

“None of the witnesses, for example, is ‘newly discovered.’ Bankman-Fried well before trial knew all three of them.”

Those witnesses are Daniel Chapsky, the former head of data science at FTX; Ryan Salame, an FTX executive serving a seven-year prison sentence; and Nishad Singh, a former FTX executive who testified for the government at Bankman-Fried’s trial.

All three could testify that FTX was not insolvent when it filed for bankruptcy in 2022, but illiquid, according to Bankman-Fried.

Bankman-Fried has insisted he could have honoured a stampede of customer withdrawals if he’d been given enough time to sell illiquid assets, such as company stock.

Chapsky signed an affidavit on January 1 stating he had been willing to say as much at trial. But he was dissuaded by his attorneys, who cited potential “media attacks” and retaliation from prosecutors.

Salame said he would have testified for Bankman-Fried’s defence in 2023 if not for prosecutors’ aggressive tactics. And Singh initially claimed he was unaware of a “hole” in FTX’s balance sheet, according to court records.

The argument that FTX was merely illiquid has been met with overwhelming derision by attorneys, reporters, and crypto entrepreneurs who closely followed the exchange’s downfall.

Kaplan isn’t buying that argument either.

“A fatal flaw of that spin (and the present motion) is that Bankman-Fried’s so-called ‘facts’ have been seen before,” the judge wrote. “Many times.”

Before the trial, Bankman-Fried had conceded they were “irrelevant” and “speculative,” the judge noted.

“They in substance thus are the same ‘facts’ that this Court excluded at trial and that Bankman-Fried now argues on appeal to the Circuit should have been admitted,” Kaplan continued.

“In no way are these ‘facts’ never-before-seen, let alone newly discovered.”

The judge’s order leaves just one avenue for Bankman-Fried to reverse his conviction: his pending appeal.

The three-judge panel has an informal six-month deadline to issue their ruling, which means a decision could be imminent.

But Bankman-Fried’s odds of success are low — between 2011 and 2015, about 6% of federal criminal appeals succeeded, according to data from the US court system.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out to him with tips at aleks@dlnews.com.

The vote in the Senate Banking Committee puts Warsh on a glide path to confirmation. The entire Senate is expected to vote on Warsh’s nomination in the coming weeks.

Warsh was nominated by the president in January, but his confirmation stalled due to opposition from Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina.

Tillis, the swing vote on the Banking Committee, refused to support Warsh so long as federal prosecutors were investigating outgoing Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Powell, Tillis, and many Democrats said the investigation was a brazen attempt by the president’s allies to cow a member of the Fed’s board of governors into voting to lower interest rates.

“You have extraordinary credentials. They're impeccable,” Tillis told Warsh at a hearing last week. “Let's get rid of this investigation so I can support your confirmation.”

US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said on Friday she would drop the investigation, and Tillis promptly said he would support Warsh’s nomination.

But Pirro said she “wouldn’t hesitate” to reopen the case, a statement that Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the committee, highlighted on Wednesday.

“No one is fooled,” Warren said. “Trump is still going after control of the Fed, and he is keeping the threat of bogus charges alive until he gets what he wants.”

Warsh’s independence from the Fed — or lack thereof — was a central line of attack at last week’s hearing. During one heated exchange, Warsh declined to name any issue on which he disagreed with the president.

“Mr. Warsh is a Trump sock puppet who is so cowed by the president he could not even say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election,” Warren said on Wednesday, referring to that exchange.

Tillis said Warren was trying to “score some political points.”

“I’ve got confidence that this investigation is over,” he said. “She is flatly wrong on every point she just tried to make.”

Warren also criticised Warsh over his sprawling investment empire, his “catastrophic” tenure as a Fed governor during the Bush and Obama Administrations.

Warsh’s financial disclosures show the nominee has an investment portfolio worth more than $130 million. That portfolio features over two dozen investments in crypto ventures, including DeFi lender Compound, derivatives trading platforms dYdX and Lighter, and four blockchains: Solana, Optimism, Blast, and Zero Gravity.

Last week, Warsh stressed his independence and his desire to begin a “policy regime change much more focused on interest rates” than on quantitative easing.

Since the Great Recession, the Fed has purchased trillions of dollars of US Treasury bills, flooding the economy with cash. That policy, known as quantitative easing, stimulated the economy, but it has also fuelled inflation, according to its critics.

Warsh is a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011, and his nomination was viewed positively by many in the crypto industry.

Businessman and Bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor, for example, predicted Warsh would be “the first pro-Bitcoin chairman of the Federal Reserve” if confirmed.

Polymarket punters now give Warsh a 95% chance of being confirmed by May 15, up from 27% on April 23.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

On Wednesday, the Sky Frontier Foundation released the Q1 2026 financial results for the $13 billion lender, revealing it made nearly $124 million in gross revenue, and almost $61 million in net revenue in the first three months of the year.

It’s the highest income the protocol has made since it launched as MakerDAO back in 2017.

Yet the market doesn’t seem to be impressed by the record figures. Sky’s governance token has registered a decline of around 2.4% since the results were announced publicly.

Sky, like many decentralised finance protocols, operates as a type of digital cooperative called a decentralised autonomous organisation, or DAO.

Here, those who hold the Sky governance token can suggest and vote on changes to the protocol. The Sky token trades at almost a $2 billion market value, per CoinGecko.

Sky’s record earnings come as institutional interest in onchain apps that provide yield on crypto assets continues to grow.

DeFi protocols — including Sky — are rushing to make themselves more attractive to traditional finance players by repackaging their products and paying for risk ratings from established firms like S&P Global Ratings and Fitch.

Institutional interest

In fact, its primarily institutional interest which the Sky Frontier Foundation attributes to Sky’s blow-out quarter.

Sky’s gross revenue came in at $13 million more than the nonprofit’s estimate, and was buoyed by higher-than-expected growth of the protocol’s USDS stablecoin.

“From our understanding, this outperformance in USDS growth was driven by growing institutional demand for risk-adjusted yield onchain,” the foundation said.

“Feedback across the Sky Agent Network indicates that allocators are conducting more rigorous due diligence than ever before.”

In addition to Sky beating its previous quarterly revenue record, the protocol also produced a $46 million protocol surplus against a net loss of $13.5 million in the same quarter last year.

Protocol surplus refers to the revenue the protocol made over a target previously set by governance participants.

No buybacks?

One potential reason the positive results haven’t translated into more interest in the Sky governance token is the protocol’s hesitancy to conduct buybacks.

On March 14, Sky Governance approved a capital restructuring that shifted how the protocol allocates surplus funds. Rather than directing the majority of earnings to token buybacks and staking rewards, that money now goes towards building a $150 million solvency reserve.

While such a fund improves Sky’s resilience, and may help institutional investors feel more comfortable using the protocol, it does little to immediately impact the Sky token’s value.

“The message we observed from Sky Governance is that Sky Protocol is building for long-term resilience over short-term distributions,” the Sky Frontier Foundation said.

“Sky Reserves currently stand at $50.90 million, and as reserves grow toward the target, buyback and distribution rates will scale back up.”

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

In a Wednesday appearance of the Invest Like The Best podcast, the billionaire hedge fund manager, who was one of several traders to capitalise on Bitcoin’s near 900% rise in 2020, lauded the top cryptocurrency for its ability to counter inflation.

“Bitcoin is, unequivocally, the best inflation hedge that there is,” he said. “There’s only so much Bitcoin that can be mined.”

Jones' commentary provides a candid glimpse into the financial trader’s thoughts on the top cryptocurrency, and more broadly attitudes among institutional investors.

He’s by far from the only finance heavyweight to endorse Bitcoin.

Blackrock CEO Larry Fink has on multiple occasions advocated for Bitcoin and praised its unique value. He’s previously called it “digital gold” and recommended institutions allocate around 5% to it.

Analysts at several other Wall Street firms, including JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Fidelity, have also recognised Bitcoin’s value as an inflation hedge, although some argue its effectiveness in this regard can be context-specific, and not guaranteed in all environments.

Better than gold? 

Jones, now 71, got his start trading commodities in the 1970s.

At age 26, he founded the Tudor Investment Corporation, which focused on making large bets on currencies, interest rates, commodities, and stock indices based on macroeconomic trends. The fund was a roaring success, and returned over 100% annually in its first five years operating.

Drawing from this background, Jones sees Bitcoin’s main competitor as gold, which is widely viewed as a hedge against the inflation of national currencies.

He argues that Bitcoin is better as an inflation hedge because its supply is capped at 21 million. The supply of gold, on the other hand, keeps on growing.

“In terms of it being a great inflation hedge, gold is increasing in supply every year by about a couple of percent,” he said. “Bitcoin — there’s a finite amount that can be mined, it’s decentralised, so in that sense, it has the greatest scarcity value of anything.”

Bitcoin risks

While a Bitcoin fan, Jones is not unaware of the asset’s downsides.

“The problem with it as an inflation hedge is that if you got into a kinetic exchange, there’s clearly going to be cyber warfare. Anything that you have to deal with electronically is going down, including Bitcoin,” he said.

Then there’s the mounting threat of quantum computers, which could theoretically break the encryption that underpins not just Bitcoin, but large swathes of the world’s digital infrastructure.

“Who knows if and when, with AI advancing as fast as it is, that we may actually have quantum computing,” Jones said. “Someone can come in and hack any bank, can hack anything they want to.”

A June report from consulting firm McKinsey & Company predicts that based on the current rate of development, a quantum computer with the ability to threaten Bitcoin could be developed as early as next year.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

On Wednesday, Bernstein reaffirmed its “outperform” rating on Robinhood and kept a $130 share price target, arguing the stock will nearly double after bottoming — even after a messy Q1 call sent HOOD shares tumbling 8%.

“The top-line weakness was driven by crypto weakness,” analyst Gautam Chhugani and his three Bernstein colleagues said in a note shared with DL News.

Robinhood’s lacklustre performance in crypto comes amid a broader industry downturn that has vapourised $1.5 trillion in value despite the S&P 500 soaring to new highs. Bitcoin is still trading 40% below its peak while many other tokens are down over 75% or more.

But Bernstein says investors are looking in the rear-view mirror, despite shares falling about 8% in post-market afterhours trading after the platform missed revenue and earnings targets.

“Crypto has stabilised in April and HOOD’s own prediction markets exchange — Rothera — is expected to go live mid 2026,” the analysts stressed.

The company has repurchased more than $300 million of stock so far this year, and its board refreshed buyback authorisation to $1.5 billion.

Chief executive Vlad Tenev has repeatedly said he wants to move the narrative away from Bitcoin price cycles and toward infrastructure and long-term financial services.

Mixed Q1

On Tuesday, Robinhood reported adjusted earnings per share of $0.39, missing estimates by nearly 10%.

Overall revenue came in 7% below expectations at about $1.1 billion, while adjusted EBITDA — the key metric for Wall Street — missed by 9% at $534 million.

Yet, the broader business held up.

Total revenue grew 15% compared with a year ago. Transaction-based revenue climbed to $623 million, lifted by a record surge in prediction markets trading.

Robinhood users traded 8.8 billion event contracts in the quarter, pushing “other transaction revenue” up 320% year-on-year to $147 million.

Meanwhile, Robinhood Banking has grown fivefold since the last earnings report, with over $2 billion in net deposits and a 40% direct deposit attach rate. The Gold credit card has surpassed 800,000 users, with annualised purchase volume reaching $15 billion.

Bernstein is forecasting full-year 2026 earnings per share of $2.65, 23% ahead of consensus estimates.

The upside, it says, is driven by a recovery in crypto and a breakout year for prediction markets.

At the same time, the company is leaning into artificial intelligence tools to improve product features and internal efficiency. Management says more than 90% of employees now use AI tooling.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com

Now, traders’ risk appetite is back, Split Research founder Zaheer Ebtikar said in a note shared with DL News.

“The sellers who were spooked by macro shifts or quantum fears have already exited,” he said. “Bitcoin has found a stable floor and moved away from headline-driven drama and toward a more mature phase of growth.”

Ebtikar’s call comes amid signs of budding optimism in the crypto industry. Bitcoin has rallied nearly 15% over the past month, while the overall cryptocurrency industry has added about $400 billion in value since February, CoinGecko data shows.

To be sure, the top crypto is still down nearly 40% from its October peak despite the S&P 500 hitting a new record in April. Other assets like gold and oil are also near their peaks.

Still, Bitcoin exchange-traded fund inflows paint a bright picture. US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds drew in over $2 billion in net inflows in April, marking it as a second month in a row of positive inflows, DefiLlama data shows. The surge adds to March’s $1.3 billion gain.

“Since we’re currently in a quieter trading range, there’s no immediate rush for the exits,” Ebtikar said.

Powell’s last FOMC

The signs of life unfold against a pivotal moment in Washington.

Powell is expected to keep interest rates unchanged at what economist Ed Yardeni calls his “swan song” — the final press conference of his tenure at the central bank’s helm.

Powell is likely to stress that inflation risks have increased, especially with Brent crude climbing back above $100 per barrel as US-Iran peace talks stall, Yardeni wrote. Higher oil prices complicate any immediate case for rate cuts.

Lower interest rates are good for risky assets like Bitcoin because they disincentivise investors to hold bonds by paying out less yield.

Powell’s term as chair ends on May 15, but he will still hold a Fed governor’s seat through January 2028.

The Senate Banking Committee is set to confirm Kevin Warsh as his successor on Wednesday, with a final vote potentially coming soon after.

Warsh has publicly called for lower rates sooner, though he has also promised independence from political pressure.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed for faster cuts and has clashed with Powell over policy and the Fed’s renovation project, which triggered a Justice Department probe that was later dropped.

“At 2:30 p.m. [ET], Jerome Powell will sing his swan song,” Yardeni said.

Crypto market movers 

• Bitcoin is up 0.5% over the past 24 hours at $77,031.
• Ethereum is up 2.1% over the past few hours at $2,323.

What we’re reading 

• Aave-led 'DeFi United' campaign raises $300m to address Kelp DAO breach — DL News
• Banks are fighting a ‘sideshow’ as Clarity Act stalls. Will it matter? — DL News
• US Military Is Running a Live Bitcoin Node for Cybersecurity Research, Indo-Pacific Commander Tells Congress — Unchained
• The AI margin trap — Milk Road
• Bitcoin mining meltdown? Why IREN’s real future is in AI, according to Bernstein — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com

There’s been a silver lining to this month’s devastating Kelp DAO/LayerZero hack: DeFi United, an impromptu, crowdsourced recovery fund.

The fund, orchestrated by Aave, has tentatively raised more than $302 million to date, much of it from DAOs and crypto businesses within the blast radius of the hack.

That’s enough to fully cover the April 18 exploit, in which hackers affiliated with North Korea stole some $293 million in rsETH from Kelp DAO by targeting its faulty implementation of a LayerZero-provided bridge — technology that lets Kelp move assets between different blockchains.

The hackers deposited $200 million of the stolen assets as collateral on Aave and borrowed large amounts of Ether. This left Aave with at least $177 million in unrecoverable bad debt.

Aave wasn’t hacked, but it may have been the prime victim. Its deposit base fell by nearly 50% as spooked investors withdrew their crypto.

Aave Labs CEO Stani Kulechov said he would contribute 5,000 Ether worth about $11 million to the DeFi United fund. Other Aave contributors have also pledged money to the effort.

Arbitrum DAO, Mantle, and Consensys have pledged at least 30,000 Ether apiece. Ether.Fi and Lido DAO have pledged 5,000 and 2,500, respectively. Kelp DAO and LayerZero have also said they would pitch in.

More surprising, however, is the fact that businesses and people largely unaffected by the hack have also jumped in to help.

Though they haven’t contributed to the fund, the Solana Foundation and Tron founder Justin Sun both plan on depositing stablecoins in Aave, a move that can help stabilize lending markets there. Both name-checked DeFi United when announcing the moves.

Count crypto VC Haseeb Qureshi among those heartened by DeFi’s kumbaya moment.

“I might have to take back everything I said criticizing Ethereum rainbows and unicorns,” he said, referring to the vaguely utopian and communal ethos among many prominent Ethereum developers.

“Sometimes rainbows and unicorns are exactly what a community needs. Very surprised this all came together through donations.”

But it hasn’t been without controversy.

Michael Bentley, the former CEO of Aave competitor Euler Labs, called it “good marketing.”

“'DeFi United’ has a much nicer ring to it than ‘bailout,’” he wrote on X.

The effort has even been controversial in the Aave governance forum.

TokenLogic, an Aave DAO service provider, proposed contributing 25,000 Ether — worth $57 million on Tuesday — from the cooperative’s treasury.

But some members had concerns. Tokédex founder Robby Greenfield noted that it asks much of the DAO “without requiring, as a precondition, any systemic reform to prevent the exact same failure from recurring.”

Other members had similar qualms. Still, TokenLogic advanced the proposal to the voting stage, arguing that changes to Aave’s risk management practices were a separate, parallel conversation.

“Conditioning disbursement on deliverables in a separate workstream would introduce delays and ambiguity at a moment that requires broader, industry-wide, aligned action,” it wrote on the forum. Voting began today.

The hack caused a crisis of confidence in crypto. The recovery effort provided a much-needed boost of morale. Now, we have to wait and see whether the whole fiasco will lead to the kind of reform that can turn this niche corner of world finance into a mainstream product.

Top DeFi stories of the week

This week in DeFi governance

VOTE: Lido DAO votes to contribute 2,500 Ether to DeFi United Recovery fund

VOTE: Aave DAO votes to contribute 25,000 Ether to DeFi United

VOTE: Aave DAO votes to formalise buyback pause

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

IREN’s future now rests on transforming into a hyperscale AI cloud operator, rather than mining Bitcoin as it had done in the past, according to wealth management firm Bernstein.

Bernstein slashed its price target on IREN to $100 from $125 per share but maintained its “outperform” rating, citing the successful pivot to building its AI cloud business.

“IREN remains our top pick among AI focused Bitcoin miners,” analyst Gautam Chhugani and his three colleagues said in a note shared with DL News.

Bernstein’s positive rating lands as the cryptocurrency industry is still reeling from a $1.5 trillion drawdown since October despite stocks and other assets soaring to historic highs. The S&P 500 printed a new record in April, while gold and commodities also post strong performance.

Bitcoin is trading 40% below its October high of $126,000, meaning that miners’ business model is less lucrative.

AI bonanza

IREN’s repositioning comes as equity investors rotate aggressively into AI plays, despite widespread chatter of a bubble.

Technology companies have driven much of the S&P 500’s gains in recent years. In contrast, crypto-linked equities like Strategy and Bitmine have struggled as digital asset prices retraced from their highs in late 2025.

The Bernstein report says IREN has contracted 150,000 graphic processing units supporting annualised revenue of $3.7 billion once fully deployed, with roughly half already locked into a five-year Microsoft deal.

By 2027, Bernstein expects the AI cloud segment alone to generate $2.1 billion in adjusted EBITDA — a key metric for Wall street — as the company sunsets its Bitcoin mining operations.

Revenue projections illustrate the shift.

Bernstein models IREN’s AI cloud revenue surging from just $16 million in 2025 to $1.4 billion in 2027, overtaking Bitcoin mining as the company’s primary engine of growth.

By 2030, analysts project $6 billion in cloud revenue and nearly $5 billion in adjusted EBITDA, with margins exceeding 80%

The physical backbone of that strategy is IREN’s 4.5 gigawatt power portfolio.

Sites in British Columbia and Texas are being retrofitted for GPU racks, while additional capacity at Sweetwater and Oklahoma provides expansion optionality.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com

On Tuesday, DeFi United, a coalition of several protocols that includes the top decentralised finance lenders, published a technical implementation for restoring the backing for rsETH, the token stolen in the attack.

“DeFi United has secured sufficient ETH commitments to restore full backing,” Aave said in the outline, adding that the plan is to restore rsETH backing without socialising losses among the protocol’s users.

On April 18, North Korean hackers stole $293 million from Kelp DAO by tricking the protocol into releasing unbacked rsETH tokens.

The attackers deposited some of these tokens as collateral on Aave and Compound, then borrowed large amounts of Ether, leaving the pair with a combined $246 million in bad debt.

If DeFi United’s plan is successful, Aave and Compound users whose assets were withdrawn by the hackers using the dummy rsETH collateral will get them back in full.

The Kelp DAO hack is one of several major crypto thefts in recent months.

The spree has sparked a crisis of confidence within the DeFi community, with many industry insiders questioning if the trade-offs inherent in decentralised technology are worth the trouble.

Restoring the backing

DeFi United will start restoring rsETH’s backing by converting committed Ether into the asset in multiple tranches.

This will replenish rsETH’s backing so that every token in circulation will once again be fully collateralised by real Ether.

At the same time, the $246 million worth of rsETH still sitting in the hacker’s positions on Aave and Compound will be cleared via controlled liquidations, Aave said. To do this, the protocols will temporarily lower the oracle price of rsETH via governance votes to enable the liquidations.

Oracles are trusted data feeds that publish the prices of crypto assets on blockchains. DeFi protocols like Aave rely on them to know how healthy lending positions are.

Potential risks

While the plan is fairly straightforward, there are some potential risks, Aave said.

Liquidating the hacker’s positions requires governance proposals to pass and execute correctly on both Ethereum and Arbitrum, the layer 2 blockchain where the hacker sent some of the stolen funds. This, and other parts of the plan, are subject to governance votes among the respective protocols’ DAOs.

There’s also a chance the hacker could try and sabotage the recovery.

“Deliberate interference by the attacker could result in incomplete deficit accrual, requiring additional liquidation steps to fully resolve the positions,” Aave said.

Aave and DeFi United plan to start executing the rsETH recovery in the coming days, Aave Labs CEO Stani Kulechov said on X.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

On Monday, the crypto treasury firm bought up another $294 million worth of Ether in its largest haul since December. It now holds roughly $12 billion worth of the second-largest cryptoasset, alongside significant equity stakes in ventures including Beast Industries and Eightco.

Bitmine Chair Tom Lee said Ethereum is benefiting from “dual tailwinds”: Wall Street tokenising assets and artificial intelligence. Bitmine is one of the few public equities offering exposure to OpenAI via Eightco.

Bitmine’s latest haul comes as Senator Cynthia Lummis said at the Bitcoin 2026 conference on Monday that the Senate will mark up the long-awaited Clarity Act in May — a pivotal step toward establishing a federal framework for digital assets.

Lummis is one of the most prominent voices on Capitol Hill backing the crypto industry and an early Bitcoin buyer.

Ethereum is up 14% over the past month, though still down 54% from its August peak of $4,950. Spot exchange-traded funds tracking the token have drawn $489 million in April, snapping a five month losing streak, DefiLlama data shows.

“In our view, there is a lot of meaning to Ethereum being the best 'war-time store of value' and to Ether being the asset leading since the [Iran] war started," said Lee.

Though its share price is down over 60% since August, Bitmine enjoys backing from ARK's Cathie Wood, Founders Fund, Pantera, Kraken, Galaxy Digital and Bill Miller.

Clarity Act

The Clarity Act is facing delays in Washington as lawmakers struggle to agree on key parts of the bill.

The bill, which has been stuck in Senate procedural limbo after clearing the House back in July 2025, would establish a federal market structure framework for digital assets. Lawmakers have been haggling over friction points including stablecoin yield rules and regulatory jurisdiction.

The Senate Banking Committee failed to schedule an April markup of the Clarity Act, pushing debate into May as sticking points remain.

Last week, Galaxy Digital’s head of research warned in a note shared with DL News that if the Senate does not move forward with the Clarity Act by mid-May, the chances of it passing in 2026 will drop quickly. He estimates the odds are already around 50% or lower.

Lummis pledged swift movement in Washington, saying the Senate will take up the Clarity Act in May and push through digital asset legislation.

“Bitcoin comes with a culture that could’ve written the US Declaration of Independence that we celebrate today,” she said.

Crypto market movers 

• Bitcoin is down 1.1% over the past 24 hours at $76,822.
• Ethereum is down 1.6% over the past few hours at $2,283.

What we’re reading 

• Justin Sun announces $20m boost for Aave as he calls on lender to expand to his blockchain — DL News
• Banks are fighting a ‘sideshow’ as Clarity Act stalls. Will it matter? — DL News
• US Military Is Running a Live Bitcoin Node for Cybersecurity Research, Indo-Pacific Commander Tells Congress — Unchained
• S&P 7,100, Oil drought, and a $3T bond bet  — Milk Road
• Bitcoin traders eye $90,000 price after Kevin Warsh’s confirmation chances skyrocket. Here’s why — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com

These are just some of the things that Japanese Bitcoin treasury firm Metaplanet has aimed its cash cannon at as it attempts to prop up its ailing share price.

Metaplanet’s stock has fallen some 25% since the start of the year, dragged down by Bitcoin’s 11% drop over the same period.

The firm is also trading at a 36% discount to the value of its Bitcoin holdings. In other words, Metaplanet’s share price values the firm at just $2 billion, despite it holding some $3.1 billion worth of Bitcoin.

For a crypto treasury whose stated goal is to hold 1% of the world’s Bitcoin supply by 2027, advertising is crucially important.

The firm generates revenue by selling options against its existing Bitcoin holdings. The more Bitcoin it holds the more options it can sell, increasing revenues.

Metaplanet funds additional Bitcoin purchases by issuing and selling shares. In December, it bought some $451 million Bitcoin funded through a mixture of issuing and selling shares and taking out loans against its existing Bitcoin holdings.

If the firm’s share price falls, it can’t buy as much Bitcoin, threatening its growth.

Unwinding Bitcoin

Metaplanet’s advertising gambit comes as Bitcoin treasuries face increasing pressure.

Many of the nearly 200 firms to adopt the Bitcoin buying model are flailing now that the top cryptocurrency has retreated from its $126,000 all-time high, leaving dozens of corporate buyers underwater.

In February, Bitcoin treasury firm GD Culture Group, which has since pivoted to artificial intelligence, approved the sale of $503 million worth of Bitcoin to buy back its own shares. The move will cost the firm some $300 million.

At the start of April, Bitcoin treasury Nakamoto sought a reverse stock split after a 99% drop in its share price threatened its position on the Nasdaq exchange.

“The Bitcoin treasury space is unwinding due to lacklustre demand from investors for shares in Bitcoin and altcoin treasury companies,” Dom Kwok, former Goldman Sachs analyst and co-founder of developer app EasyA, previously told DL News.

Metaplanet is the third-biggest corporate Bitcoin holder in the world after Michael Saylor’s Strategy and Jack Mallers’ Twenty One Capital.

Yet the firm, too, is underwater. It is down some 20% on its Bitcoin horde, according to data from Bitcointreasuries.net.

Splashing out

But that hasn’t stopped Metaplanet from splashing out on advertising.

The firm’s annual shareholder meeting, held at the Pia Arena MM just outside of Tokyo on March 25, saw attendees lavished with goody bags containing branded merchandise, and treated to a live set-to-music calligraphy performance called “Beni No Sho.”

Metaplanet combined the event with its Japan Bitcoin Future Forum, a half-day conference organised by the treasury firm designed to promote Bitcoin in Japan.

Then on April 26, Metaplanet’s advertising appeared on the Las Vegas Sphere, a colossal 580,000 square foot exterior display that has previously attracted promotions from Google, Pepsi, and the F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix.

The entertainment venue reportedly charges $650,000 to advertise on the sphere for a week or $450,000 for a single day, although these prices can change depending on the time of the year.

Metaplanet is also a high-tier sponsor of Bitcoin for Corporations, a Las Vegas conference taking place on April 27. CEO Simon Gerovich is confirmed to speak at the event.

The firm was also the title sponsor of Bitcoin Asia 2025, the second-largest Bitcoin event globally which took place in Hong Kong in August.

‘Shouldn't we buy more Bitcoin?’

Metaplanet’s glitzy advertising has angered some of its supporters.

Shortly before the firm’s shareholder meeting, Gerovich announced the event would include a performance from Avantgardey, an award-winning Japanese dance troupe.

'Shouldn't we buy more Bitcoin, even if it's just by one satoshi, with the money spent on inviting Avantgardey?'

Metaplanet supporters criticised the move on X, arguing that it was a waste of money and didn’t benefit shareholders.

“Shouldn't we buy more Bitcoin, even if it's just by one satoshi, with the money spent on inviting Avantgardey?” One supporter said.

It’s not clear if Avantgardey did ultimately perform at Metaplanet’s AGM. A schedule of the event on the Metaplanet website makes no mention of the performance.

A Metaplanet spokesperson confirmed to DL News that the group did perform at the firm's shareholder meeting.

Yet despite the critics, the firm’s total advertising spend is likely small compared to its overall revenues.

In Metaplanet’s 2026 guidance, the firm said it planned to spend around $29 million on Selling, General & Administrative expenses, which includes money spent on marketing, advertising, salaries, and events, among other things.

For the full year of 2025, the firm reported revenues of around $58 million.

Yet that did little to impact Metaplanet’s total loss of $605 million last year, driven by a decrease in the value of its Bitcoin holdings.

Update, April 28: Added a comment from a Metaplanet spokesperson.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

Sporting some $5.3 billion in deposits, Tron is the fifth biggest blockchain for decentralised finance. It has a cult following thanks to its billionaire founder, and a strong user base across Asia and several developing countries.

Yet despite its size, Aave has yet to deploy code there. Sun wants that to change.

“TRON and HTX stand together with AAVE jointly supplying $20M USDT to AAVE Core V3 Market in a show of support to bring AAVE to TRON. DeFi United!” Sun said in a Monday X post.

HTX, a Seychelles-based crypto exchange, is also owned by Sun.

The Tron founder’s pledge of support comes after North Korea stole some $293 million from KelpDAO, an Ethereum DeFi protocol, on April 18.

The hackers deposited $200 million of the stolen assets as collateral on Aave and borrowed large amounts of Ether. This left Aave with at least $177 million in unrecoverable bad debt.

A coordinated effort among big names in DeFi, coupled with partial recoveries of the stolen funds, have helped Aave plug the hole. So far, the lender has secured $160 million — around 80% — of the needed coverage.

Sun previously pleaded with the Kelp DAO hackers to return the stolen funds.

Aave on Tron

Whether or not to deploy Aave on the Tron blockchain isn’t a new debate.

In April last year, Aave-Chan Initiative, an Aave DAO service provider, ran a vote to see if DAO members were interested in a potential Tron deployment.

The vote passed and Aave-Chan Initiative called for the publication of a formal request for comment on the deployment, which ran between April 30 and August 22 that year. Several Aave DAO service providers, including Chaos Labs and LlamaRisk, provided feedback and risk recommendations.

Yet since then, there’s been little progress.

Sun’s comments — coupled with his $20 million liquidity injection — could help reignite discussions, and potentially lead to a binding onchain vote over whether to expand Aave to Tron.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

The National Prosecutor’s Office organised crime-fighting unit, also known as Pnaco, called the cases a “phenomenon that is evolving rapidly.” Just three such cases were reported in 2023, with numbers ballooning to 18 in 2024 and skyrocketing 272% last year, Pnaco said.

“We’ve identified multiple individuals who are involved in several cases,” said Vanessa Perrée, the head of Pnaco, as reported by French newspaper Le Parisien. “We have revealed the existence of structured networks.”

So far this year, prosecutors say they have identified 47 cases. Among the most recent of these involved a family of five, who were reportedly held at gunpoint by robbers who made off with their car and a cold wallet containing $800,000 worth of crypto

Crackdowns continue

Pnaco said police and prosecutors’ crackdowns are bearing fruit.

So far, 88 people, including around a dozen minors, have been charged in 12 active crypto-related kidnapping cases. The vast majority of these 75 suspects remain in pre-trial detention, with the bulk of arrests coming in recent months, prosecutors said.

Pnaco said it had recently charged three men, aged between 25 and 30, in connection with a crypto-kidnapping reported in November in Challes-les-Eaux, in the Savoie Department.

Officers said two of the trio are also being charged with carrying out a “similar case” reported just weeks later in Charente-Maritime.

All of the suspects have prior criminal records, Pnaco added.

Meanwhile, police have arrested a 17-year-old boy on suspicion of kidnapping a woman and her 67-year-old mother in a violent attempt to extort crypto.

Officers say they found the boy “playing PlayStation games in his family home,” days after the attack, French newspaper Le Monde reported.

The boy and two alleged accomplices bundled the women into the trunk of their car. Police said they found traces of one of the alleged victims’ blood in the vehicle.

Detectives said the trio admitted they were “recruited” on Telegram by an individual who called himself “Hermano,” which means “brother” in Spanish.

Two of the suspects were arrested as they attempted to board a bus bound for Spain.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com

Zachary Townsend, CEO of crypto insurance company Meanwhile, says that traditional banks lobbying to block yield-bearing stablecoins are “fighting a sideshow.”

“Every incumbent fights a better financial product,” Townsend said. “Stalling the Clarity Act doesn't change where this ends.

“They lobby, they delay, but they lose the market anyway.”

Townsend’s optimistic take comes as the Senate Banking Committee failed to schedule an April markup of the Clarity Act, pushing debate into May as three sticking points remain: decentralisation provisions, securing Republican votes, and stablecoin yield.

The delay comes even as President Donald Trump told memecoin holders at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend that he wants the bill passed and would sign it immediately.

“The banks are fighting a sideshow while the real deposit displacement is already underway,” Townsend said.

What’s the issue?

At the heart of the standoff lies stablecoin interest.

The Genius Act, signed into law by Trump in July 2025, requires stablecoin issuers to maintain one-to-one reserves backing outstanding tokens. Those reserves can include US dollars, federal reserve notes, insured deposits, short-term Treasuries and money market funds.

Crucially, the law prohibits issuers from offering direct interest or yield to stablecoin holders. It does not explicitly block affiliates or third parties from structuring yield products around them. Some versions of the proposed Clarity Act would close that gap entirely.

Banking groups argue that allowing stablecoins to offer competitive returns could drain deposits from traditional bank accounts. Because stablecoin reserves are fully backed rather than fractionally lent, critics warn this could shrink lending capacity.

But a White House economic analysis published earlier in April paints a different picture.

Using a baseline model, eliminating stablecoin yield increases bank lending by just $2.1 billion — roughly 0.02% of total lending — while imposing a net welfare cost of $800 million. Large banks account for 76% of the modest lending bump, with community banks contributing about $500 million, or a 0.026% increase in their lending.

Even under stacked “worst-case” assumptions — including stablecoins growing sixfold as a share of deposits and reserves locked entirely in non-lendable cash — the model produces a 4.4% increase in aggregate bank loans. Community bank lending rises by 6.7% in that extreme scenario.

Townsend sees the debate as symbolic. In his view, deposit migration is structural.

In January, Standard Chartered forecasted that banks could lose up to $1.5 trillion in deposits to stablecoins by 2028 regardless of yield rules.

Runway ending

The legislative calendar is tightening.

Republican Senator Thom Tillis has requested more time to consult banks on the yield issue and release draft text.

If it is not passed before the midterm elections in November, it could be delayed for years, according to Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital.

“If the markup slips past mid-May, the probability of enactment in 2026 will drop sharply,” Thorn warned in a note shared with DL News. “In our view, the odds of Clarity being signed into law in 2026 are roughly 50-50, and possibly lower.”

Polymarket punters give the Clarity Act a 47% chance of being passed in 2026, down from 82% in February.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com

Officers accuse a man in his sixties surnamed Ma, who resides in Henan Province, of being the “ringleader” of a macabre private Telegram community dedicated to cat torture. The community members typically paid the accused to make custom cat torture videos.

“In the early hours of April 19, our volunteers found a kitten with its eyes gouged out, and its throat cut in a rubbish bin in a building in a residential complex [near Ma’s house],” members of a cat rescue group told Chinese media outlet China Newsweek.

Telegram is banned in Mainland China, but scores of Chinese users have found workarounds and proxies that allow them to access the app. Tech startups last year showcased an array of tools that will let police monitor Chinese-language groups on Telegram.

Hunt for ringleader

The cat rescue group was spearheaded by a Henan Province resident surnamed Zhang. The group said it spent months trying to unmask the identity of the torture group ringleader.

Their efforts finally paid off last week, Zhang said.

“Ma told an elderly neighbour he would help find new homes for more than 20 stray cats the neighbour was caring for,” Zhang said, “On the morning of April 18, Ma then adopted a kitten. And on the same night at around 11 pm, he suddenly turned up the volume on his TV.”

The group said this suggests Ma was trying to cover up the sound of the cat’s cries of pain. The same kitten’s body was found in the aforementioned bin the following day.

The rescue group said it had monitored the Telegram group ringleader, who used the alias Mou Tian, for some time.

The group said it had evidence Mou Tian began posting cat torture videos on Telegram in 2022, and had made scores of custom videos for customers who provided crypto donations.

Late-night excursions

After examining clues in scores of photographs and videos, the group was able to gather evidence suggesting Ma and Mou Tian were the same person.

Before reporting their evidence to the police, the group watched Ma’s behaviour carefully, noticing that he would leave his house at around midnight most days, only returning home at 4 or 5 am.

“We suspect that he deliberately chose to go out during times when there were fewer people around, so he could catch and abuse stray cats,” Zhang said.

The group also found evidence Ma had adopted cats through pet shops, online platforms, and rescue organisations, but added that the “whereabouts of most of these cats remains unknown.”

“Mou Tian had previously posted in the Telegram group about going out late at night to abuse and kill cats and trick people into adopting kittens. These details correspond to Ma’s behaviour,” a group member using the alias Lin Feng told China Newsweek.

Online clues

The volunteers spent days trying to confirm their suspicions, using the online evidence as a guide.

Through on-site visits and interviews with residents, they were able to establish that one of Mou Tian’s filming sites appeared to be a parking lot near Ma’s house. Other videos appeared to confirm a torture location as the balcony of Ma’s home.

And a particularly stomach-churning torture video that involved Mou Tian inflicting burns on a cat tied to a frying pan over a gas hob, matched up with images of Ma’s kitchen.

The group compiled all the evidence it could find and reported the case to a police station in the city of Pingdingshan.

Officers responded by arresting Ma. They have placed him under administrative detention for 10 days.

But legal experts say prosecutors may struggle to build a strong case against him, describing the case as “complex.”

Chinese law essentially classifies stray cats as wild animals, and legal protection surrounding abuse of these animals is vague, a lawyer told the same media outlet.

“Stray cats cannot be considered private property and therefore cannot be subject to property-related penalties, unlike pets,” the lawyer said.

Instead, police have charged Ma with “disturbing public order on an especially large scale.”

Jiulishan Police Station refused to comment further on the matter, telling China Newsweek that “details of the case could not be disclosed at this time.”

The development comes as Chinese courts crack down on individuals and organisations who use crypto to launder money and commit other crimes.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com