![\"Ethereum,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5535-3c12-7540-aa5a-6cb1fc787b73.png\")
The Ethereum Foundation (EF), the non-profit organization that steers development of the Ethereum ecosystem, staked over 45,000 Ether (ETH) on Friday, bringing the total amount staked to about 69,500 ETH, less than 500 coins shy of the Foundation’s 70,000 goal.
The EF staked the coins in a series of transactions, each consisting of 2,047 ETH, with the total amount staked on Friday valued at over $92.2 million, according to data from Arkham Intelligence.
The EF began staking ETH in February as part of its revamped treasury strategy policy announced in June 2025 and will use the yield generated to fund protocol research, development and ecosystem grants. The EF said in its updated treasury policy:
“We are now increasingly moving into staking and DeFi, both to enhance financial sustainability and to support a key application category that is delivering on the promise of permissionless, secure access to base civilizational infrastructure for millions of people today.”
The foundation staked 2,016 ETH, valued at about $4.1 million in February, followed by 22,517 ETH, valued at about $46.1 million, in March. The EF has locked over $143 million in ETH in the Ethereum Beacon Deposit Contract, according to Arkham Intelligence.
![\"Ethereum,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5538-f66e-7140-9d17-c333927daf12.png\")
The adoption of a yield-bearing treasury strategy followed pressure from the Ethereum community on the EF to generate income from its treasury to cover expenses, rather than continually selling tokens to fund operations.
Related: Ethereum Foundation sells $10.2M worth of ETH to BitMine in OTC deal
Validators, who lock up tokens to secure proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain networks, can influence which chain is valid in the event of a network hardfork, or a partition of a network into two competing chains.
“If EF stakes, ourselves, this de facto forces us to take a position on any future contentious hard fork,” Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said in January 2025.
The EF is exploring ways to mitigate the centralization risks posed by its staking activities in the event of a contentious hard fork, Buterin added.
Magazine: Ethereum’s Fusaka fork explained for dummies: What the hell is PeerDAS?
", "description": "The Ethereum Foundation has nearly reached its target goal of 70,000 staked ETH, as part of its new treasury strategy focused on yield-bearing activities.", "published": "2026-04-03T22:31:51+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "altcoin" }, { "slug": "ethereum" }, { "slug": "staking" } ], "slug": "ethereum-foundation-nearly-reaches-70000-staked-eth-goal", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "259152" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Cambodian lawmakers propose severe prison time for crypto scammers", "leadText": "The draft bill, yet to be signed into law by the king, marked a significant policy change for Cambodia officials in addressing scam centers.", "author": { "slug": "turner-wright" }, "bodyText": "Cambodia's parliament passed legislation targeting compounds used to defraud victims through scams, including those involving cryptocurrency.
In a Friday notice, the Senate of the Kingdom of Cambodia announced that the chamber had unanimously approved the draft law with no amendment, with 58 senators voting yes. According to reports, the draft bill, which would still need the king’s approval before becoming law, imposed prison time between two to five years and up to $125,000 in fines for certain crimes, or twice the time in prison and penalties if part of a gang or targeting multiple victims.
“The draft law stipulates the establishment of criminal rules to fill the gaps and deficiencies in the current law, which will contribute significantly to addressing challenges that pose serious risks to social security, the economy and citizens, including affecting Cambodia's reputation, as well as improving the effectiveness of the fight against fraud through technological systems, aiming to contribute to the preservation and protection of public security and order, and improving the effectiveness of cooperation in combating this crime,” said a translation of the Friday Senate notice on the bill.
![\"Law,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d54e0-4a8e-7585-9b86-33d6fba5055f.png\")
According to a 2025 report from the US State Department, Cambodia’s government “frequently downplayed scam operation cases as labor disputes,” never arresting or prosecuting any owner or operator of a suspected scam compound. The Cambodian operations are just some of many across parts of Southeast Asia, where compounds are alleged sources of forced labor.
Related: UK sanctions $20B scam market by cutting ‘legitimate’ crypto ties
The passage of the bill followed UK authorities sanctioning the operators of a Cambodia-based scam center, and the country extraditing to China the leader of a criminal syndicate with alleged tied to scam compounds. Cambodia’s national assembly advanced the bill on March 30, with all 112 members voting yay.
According to a 2024 UN News report that explored a compound in the Philippines, scam centers like the ones targeted under the Cambodian bill were massive undertakings, with facilities designed so that the residents would never need to leave. Although many of the workers were responsible for carrying out the scams, they were also “trafficked here, held against their will” and “exposed to violence” in the compounds.
“The people who work here are basically fenced off from the outside world,” said the report. “All their daily necessities are met. There are restaurants, dormitories, barbershops and even a karaoke bar. So, people don’t actually have to leave and can stay here for months.”
Magazine: Your guide to surviving this mini-crypto winter
", "description": "A draft law targeting scam centers unanimously passed by Cambodia's Senate on Friday will head to the king for approval.", "published": "2026-04-03T21:47:12+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "law" }, { "slug": "cambodia" }, { "slug": "crimes" }, { "slug": "scams" }, { "slug": "regulation" } ], "slug": "cambodia-law-prison-crypto-scammers", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "259147" }, { "category": { "slug": "interview" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Is Bitcoin mispricing a prolonged Iran war? Ex-hedge fund manager weighs in", "leadText": "In a recent Cointelegraph interview, macro investor James Lavish explains why markets are pricing in a quick end to the Iran war — and what could happen if that assumption is wrong.", "author": { "slug": "marco-castrovilli" }, "bodyText": "In the latest interview with Cointelegraph, macro investor and former hedge fund manager James Lavish issued a stark warning to Bitcoin holders and global investors: markets may be pricing in a quick resolution to the Iran conflict — but if that assumption proves wrong, the consequences could be severe.
Lavish argued that if the conflict drags on and keeps pressure on oil prices, the result could be a fresh inflation shock, renewed fears of stagflation and a major repricing across global markets.
In his view, this scenario would put the Federal Reserve in an impossible position: unable to raise rates aggressively without risking recession, yet unable to cut rates due to persistent inflation.
That is where the conversation becomes especially relevant for Bitcoin (BTC). Lavish explains why Bitcoin has behaved differently from gold and equities in recent months, and why that relative resilience may not last in a true “correlation-to-one” panic event.
If markets suffer a deeper drawdown, he says, Bitcoin could fall another 10% to 20%, potentially revisiting the low $50,000 or even high $40,000 range.
And yet, Lavish is far from bearish in the long run.
One of the most compelling parts of the interview is his argument that such a sell-off would not destroy the Bitcoin thesis — it could actually create a major opportunity. He also explains why investors should avoid being either too levered or completely unexposed in a market driven by war headlines, bond stress and rapidly shifting expectations around Fed policy.
The interview also touches on safe haven investments, energy markets, Treasury yields and money printing.
If you want to understand how an experienced macro investor thinks about war risk, recession risk and Bitcoin’s next move, watch the full interview on our YouTube channel and don’t forget to subscribe!
The Independent Community Bankers of America has opposed the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (OCC) conditional approval of Coinbase’s national trust bank charter, warning the application falls short of regulatory standards and could pose risks to consumers and the financial system.
On Thursday, ICBA said Coinbase’s application shows deficiencies in risk controls, profitability and resolution planning, and argued the OCC lacks statutory authority to expand trust powers for crypto-related activities without applying the full set of banking regulations.
The group said the decision reflects a broader trend of nonbank entities seeking access to the benefits of bank charters without meeting the same regulatory requirements. It wrote:
The sudden influx of applications demonstrates nonbank entities are seeking the benefits of a US bank charter without satisfying the full scope of US bank regulations.
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund also criticized the decision, warning the approval departs from longstanding banking law and could expose the financial system to risks tied to crypto market volatility, fraud and money laundering.
The objections follows the OCC’s conditional approval on Thursday of Coinbase’s application to establish a national trust bank, after six months of review by the US regulator.
![\"Coinbase,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5444-72ac-7178-8d54-68b4d56feea4.png\")
Coinbase released a statement on Thursday saying the charter would bring its custody and market infrastructure business under federal oversight, emphasizing that it does not plan to hold customer deposits or engage in fractional reserve lending, and adding that “the right path forward for crypto is through the system — not around it.”
Related: Crypto awareness tops 80% among young people in UK: Coinbase survey
The opposition is part of a broader dispute between banking groups and crypto companies over the role of digital assets in the financial system, particularly around stablecoins and yield-bearing products.
In January, CEO of Bank of America Brian Moynihan warned that allowing stablecoin issuers to offer interest could draw as much as $6 trillion in deposits out of the banking system, reducing lending capacity and pushing borrowing costs higher.
Industry groups such as the Bank Policy Institute have also raised similar concerns in letters to lawmakers, arguing that regulatory gaps could allow yield-bearing stablecoin products to bypass restrictions and disrupt traditional credit channels.
The debate is currently playing out in Washington, where Coinbase is engaged in policy discussions over the US Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, a bill aimed at establishing federal rules for crypto oversight.
![\"Coinbase,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d543f-16c6-7879-acb2-9f09ec970a6a.png\")
While Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in January that the company could not support the legislation as drafted due to restrictions on stablecoin rewards, Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal said on Thursday that lawmakers are nearing agreement on core elements of the bill, though the yield issue remains a key sticking point.
The dispute has delayed a Senate Banking Committee markup, a required step before the bill can advance to a full Senate vote, leaving broader efforts to establish a federal framework for digital assets unresolved.
Magazine: Nobody knows if quantum secure cryptography will even work
Disclaimer. This content is part of a paid partnership. The text below is a sponsored article that is not part of Cointelegraph.com editorial content. The material is written by our advertorial team and has undergone editorial review to ensure clarity and relevance, it may not reflect the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.com. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research before taking any actions related to the company. Disclosure.
![\"Cryptocurrencies,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d53ce-7e04-7ed2-88de-f345ec379ae1.png\")
While the EU prepares for full compliance with MiCA, Legal Nodes helps companies in the region navigate the transition period efficiently.
Regulatory clarity has been a major expectancy in the crypto market for a long time. The practice was usually trying to fit crypto assets into existing legal frameworks, and that created many uncertainties for both service providers and users.
The situation has changed in recent years. Regulators around the world have gotten to work on introducing industry-specific laws. In Europe, where regulations were fragmented and differed heavily in each jurisdiction, a union-wide framework was enforced in 2024: Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA).
MiCA introduced licensing and reporting requirements for crypto asset service providers (CASPs), rules for issuing tokens and measures to prevent fraud and manipulation. Under MiCA, compliant CASPs will be able to provide service to all nations in the union.
Though the framework became fully enforceable by the end of 2024, member countries have been granted a transition period to establish their national regulations and comply with the framework. This period can extend up to 18 months.
Some countries, like the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Latvia and Finland, opted for a 6-month transition period. Since June 30, 2025, full MiCA authorization is mandatory in these jurisdictions.
Meanwhile, Germany, Ireland, Austria, Slovakia and Lithuania implemented a 12-month window that ended on Dec. 31, 2025. Most of the other nations, including France, Italy, Czechia and Spain, decided to maximize the transition period and opted for the 18-month window.
Currently, platforms based in these countries are relying on grandfathering provisions — a temporary allowance to operate under existing national rules — to service EU clients. But this period will end on July 1, 2026. Until then, CASPs have to prepare for full compliance with MiCA.
Legal Nodes, a cross-border legal advisory platform, assists companies in these transitioning countries to navigate the process efficiently.
Through private consultation sessions, Legal Nodes supports the preparation period by turning MiCA from a broad legal framework into a set of concrete decisions companies need to make before the deadline.
The process starts with scope. A firm first has to establish whether MiCA applies to its activities at all, and if it does, whether it is categorized as a service provider, a token issuer or both. That assessment shapes the rest of the compliance process, because the obligations are tied to what the business actually does.
From there, the work becomes more operational. Legal Nodes assists companies with licensing support, while also helping them prepare the legal and compliance foundation that sits around authorization. MiCA readiness is not limited to securing approval from a regulator. Firms also need workable KYC and AML processes, internal compliance procedures, privacy protections and a legal structure that can support regulated activity across Europe.
The structuring element carries special importance. Even under a union-wide regime, firms still need to decide where to establish entities, how to organize operations and how to keep legal arrangements aligned with both MiCA and existing regulations.
For example, MiCA regulates Electronic Money Tokens (EMTs) and Asset-Referenced Tokens (ARTs), but these flows can also trigger Payment Services Directive (PSD2) requirements. Miscalculating this intersection can be a serious compliance risk under current conditions.
The ever-tightening window for full MiCA compliance leaves little room for fragmented work. Firms preparing for the new regime may also need to address AML controls, GDPR obligations and entity structuring across several markets at the same time.
Legal Nodes operates across 28 jurisdictions and has supported more than 300 companies so far, with experience spanning MiCA, AML, GDPR and cross-border legal structuring. For platforms still relying on grandfathering provisions, that kind of expertise may be especially relevant as the remaining window narrows and full compliance draws closer.
", "description": "With the maximum grandfathering period coming to an end across Europe, crypto firms are under pressure to fully align with MiCA", "published": "2026-04-03T19:00:00+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "cryptocurrencies" }, { "slug": "business" }, { "slug": "europe" }, { "slug": "mica" }, { "slug": "regulation" } ], "slug": "eu-crypto-firms-turn-to-legal-support-as-deadline-for-mica-compliance-nears", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "Spotlight" } ] }, "id": "259092" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Kalshi onboards ex-Democratic strategist amid legal troubles", "leadText": "Stephanie Cutter will join the prediction markets company as a policy adviser, having previously worked in Democratic lawmakers’ campaigns.", "author": { "slug": "turner-wright" }, "bodyText": "Predictions market platform Kalshi announced that a former staffer of US President Barack Obama had joined the company as a policy adviser.
In a Thursday notice, Kalshi said Stephanie Cutter would join the prediction markets company from Precision Strategies, a communications firm she co-founded in 2013. Kalshi said the addition of Cutter came as the company planned to “deepen its relationships in DC and across the country.”
![\"Law,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5428-7d64-7716-a2b9-624fa85e5b1b.png\")
According to Kalshi co-founder and CEO Tarek Mansour, Cutter’s experience allowed her to “get [the] message to the right people,” highlighting her background in government and politics. The predictions market already has staff with ties to the US government, including the appointment of the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., as a strategic adviser in January 2025, the week before his father took office.
In the last year, Kalshi has come under scrutiny from many US state-level authorities, who have filed lawsuits against the platform and other companies offering event contracts on prediction markets for sports, alleging that they constituted illegal bets.
Under Trump nominee Michael Selig, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has claimed that the agency has the “exclusive jurisdiction” to oversee such markets, filing lawsuits against state gaming regulators.
Related: Polymarket expands into equities and commodities with Pyth price feeds
Many Democrats in US Congress have also called for scrutiny into prediction markets after what they called “suspicious trades” related to the country’s invasion of Iran. Although Kalshi and Polymarket announced plans in March to implement guardrails to prevent accounts from using insider information, some lawmakers introduced legislation that could ban politicians from engaging in such bets on prediction markets.
As of Friday, none of the bills proposed in Congress had been signed into law, and it was unclear what the outcome would be for many of the state-level lawsuits.
Magazine: Solana exec trolls crypto gamers, Pixel tackles play-to-earn issues: Web3 Gamer
", "description": "The predictions market company which hired Donald Trump Jr. as a strategic adviser in 2025 will also onboard Democratic strategist Stephanie Cutter.", "published": "2026-04-03T18:12:55+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "law" }, { "slug": "united-states" }, { "slug": "regulation" }, { "slug": "policy" }, { "slug": "kalshi" }, { "slug": "prediction-markets" } ], "slug": "kalshi-democratic-strategist-lawsuits-state-federal", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "259112" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "ZachXBT accuses Circle of $420M in 'compliance failures' since 2022", "leadText": "Circle had several hours or days to freeze illicit USDC funds in many of the 15 cases presented, but failed to act, according to ZachXBT.", "author": { "slug": "vince-quill" }, "bodyText": "Onchain detective ZachXBT claims that Circle, the issuer of the USDC (USDC) stablecoin, has failed to freeze or blacklist about $420 million in illicit fund flows since 2022.
Circle can freeze illicit funds and blacklist wallet addresses, but either took “minimal” action to freeze illicit flows or failed to act in 15 separate hack-and-fraud cases, including those linked to North Korean (DPRK) state-affiliated hackers, ZachXBT said.
The stablecoin issuer allegedly failed to freeze $9 million in USDC from the GMX decentralized exchange (DEX) hack in July 2025, and blacklisted wallets linked to the $200 million Cetus DEX hack in May 2025 after USDC was converted into Ether (ETH), according to ZackXBT.
![\"Circle,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5442-fc44-70d1-bc23-949df20ab329.png\")
Circle failed to freeze $232 million in illicit flows from the Drift Protocol Hack on Wednesday, despite a six-hour window in which the attackers converted USDC to ETH in over 100 separate transactions, he added.
“Circle builds good products, and I hold USDC myself. This isn't a post about hoping they collapse,” he said, adding that the failure to freeze these illicit flows has had “real consequences for real people.” He said:
“Nine figures were lost from the ecosystem because of repeated inaction across three years on law enforcement requests, private sector requests, and their own infrastructure. The $420 million-plus only accounts for major public cases. The real figure is likely significantly higher.”
Cointelegraph reached out to Circle but did not receive an immediate response by the time of publication.
![\"Circle,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5445-ecca-78af-80f3-20224a590e62.png\")
The lack of asset freezes has sparked an online debate in the crypto community about the role and responsibilities of centralized service providers, as blockchain protocols and users continue to be targeted in hacks and cybersecurity exploits that drain funds.
Related: ZachXBT claims Circle wrongfully freezing exchange wallets
In September 2025, Heath Tarbert, the president of Circle, said that the company was exploring “reversible” USDC transactions that could be rolled back or amended in the event of hacks, theft and fraud.
Circle has frozen USDC funds and blacklisted wallets on multiple occasions, including freezing USDC held by Tornado Cash addresses sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control in 2022.
Magazine: Meet the onchain crypto detectives fighting crime better than the cops
", "description": "The stablecoin issuer has repeatedly failed to freeze USDC tied to illicit activity or take action before funds were bridged to other networks, ZachXBT said.", "published": "2026-04-03T18:12:31+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "circle" }, { "slug": "cybercrime" }, { "slug": "hacks" }, { "slug": "stablecoin" }, { "slug": "scams-and-cybercrime" } ], "slug": "zachxbt-accuses-circle-420m-compliance-failures-since-2022", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "259107" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Crypto Biz: Bitcoin treasuries break ranks as BTC dips below $70K", "leadText": "Corporate Bitcoin holders split as Strategy holds firm while Nakamoto sells at a loss, exposing risks of debt-driven accumulation and a shifting treasury model under pressure.", "author": { "slug": "sam-bourgi" }, "bodyText": "Corporate Bitcoin (BTC) holders are diverging into two distinct paths amid continued market pressure. While Strategy held steady on its massive BTC reserves, Nakamoto Holdings moved in the opposite direction, selling at a loss and trimming exposure as it reworks its balance sheet.
The contrast highlights a growing divide in the corporate Bitcoin treasury model. Some holders have refused to sell, treating BTC as a long-term reserve asset and doubling down through volatility, while others are being forced to unlock liquidity, book losses or rethink capital allocation.
With Bitcoin down 46% from its peak, the risks behind debt-fueled or aggressive buying strategies are becoming harder to ignore.
Elsewhere, a proposed Bitcoin-backed municipal bond in New Hampshire is moving closer to issuance. It has now received a speculative-grade rating from Moody’s, underscoring both the appeal and the risks of tying public financing to digital assets.
Bitcoin treasury company Nakamoto Holdings sold roughly $20 million worth of Bitcoin in March, executing the sale at prices well below its prior acquisition costs. The transaction reduced its holdings to just over 5,000 BTC and marked a shift from unrealized to realized losses.
The company sold approximately 284 BTC at around $70,400 per coin, significantly less than its average purchase price. The proceeds were earmarked for working capital and business investments tied to recent mergers.
Alongside the crypto sale, Nakamoto also cut its equity exposure to Japanese company Metaplanet, selling millions of shares at a loss. The moves point to a broader balance-sheet reset as digital asset treasury companies come under pressure.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d53e6-c194-7959-b35e-be7c515e3e30.png\")
Michael Saylor’s Strategy broke a months-long pattern of steady Bitcoin accumulation, reporting no purchases during the latest weekly disclosure period.
The pause stands out because Strategy has maintained consistent buying as a core part of its corporate identity and capital strategy, especially during the recent market downtrend that has seen Bitcoin fall from $120,000 to below $70,000.
Weekly disclosures have become a signal for institutional demand, and even a temporary halt could suggest squeamishness over market conditions, capital availability or the pace of buying. Strategy still holds roughly 762,000 BTC, maintaining its position as the largest corporate holder of the asset.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d53e6-c529-7adb-9c7c-ff41ea6621b1.png\")
A proposed Bitcoin-backed municipal bond in New Hampshire has moved a step closer to issuance after receiving a Ba2 rating, below investment grade, from Moody’s. The structure would give investors exposure to Bitcoin-linked returns within a public finance framework, with proceeds expected to support public infrastructure and development projects.
The planned issuance, reportedly around $100 million, would be backed by Bitcoin collateral rather than traditional tax revenues. Repayments would depend on returns from that collateral, introducing a new approach that ties crypto markets to municipal borrowing.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d53e6-c87b-7aea-bce0-97efef868e2f.png\")
Digital asset manager CoinShares launched on the Nasdaq on Wednesday following a merger with special purpose acquisition company Vine Hill Capital, marking another step in bringing crypto-native companies to US public markets.
The deal gives CoinShares access to a broader investor base and deeper capital markets, while offering public market investors exposure to a company focused on digital asset products and infrastructure. SPAC structures have remained a viable route for crypto companies seeking listings despite shifting market conditions.
As Cointelegraph previously reported, the SPAC merger valued CoinShares at roughly $1.2 billion.
Crypto Biz is your weekly pulse on the business behind blockchain and crypto, delivered directly to your inbox every Thursday.
", "description": "Corporate Bitcoin strategies diverge as Strategy holds steady while Nakamoto sells at a loss, highlighting risks in debt-driven BTC accumulation and treasury models.", "published": "2026-04-03T16:28:48+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "nasdaq" }, { "slug": "bitcoin-price" }, { "slug": "new-hampshire" }, { "slug": "stocks" }, { "slug": "coinshares" }, { "slug": "microstrategy" }, { "slug": "spac" }, { "slug": "industry" } ], "slug": "corporate-bitcoin-strategy-vs-nakamoto-treasury-divide", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "Newsletter" } ] }, "id": "259097" }, { "category": { "slug": "opinion" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Execution risk in crypto is the new custody risk", "leadText": "Execution risk in crypto is the new custody risk. Live credentials, not just private keys, are now the main attack surface.", "author": { "slug": "ido-sofer" }, "bodyText": "Opinion by: Ido Sofer, founder and CEO at Sodot.
The crypto industry is normally well ahead of its game when it comes to pure innovation and functionality, but security is a different matter.
For years, custody risk in crypto was defined by a single fear: the theft of private keys. The industry responded by hardening storage with cold storage, air-gapped systems, MPC and other methods. It then recognized that protecting only the keys is not enough, introducing transaction security and policies to prevent malicious transactions that steal funds, although the keys remain safe. Both of these remain a serious threat, but focusing solely on private keys obscures a deeper shift.
Custody itself has expanded far beyond private keys.
“Custody” once meant protecting private keys. That definition no longer reflects reality. Custody has evolved into a complex, automated system that operates different kinds of transactions, across multiple venues, custodians, vendors and internal systems. Modern trading firms operate across exchanges, staking platforms, liquidity venues and infrastructure providers, each with API keys, validator keys, deployment credentials and system-level secrets that can move capital directly or indirectly.
Many of these credentials are stored in secret managers that, by design, return the full key to any authenticated process. Convenient, yes, but structurally fragile. If the execution environment is compromised, either by an external attacker, an employee that was threatened or a malicious dependency, the full key is compromised. Custody risk has expanded beyond dormant on-chain keys into a live execution layer, where capital moves in milliseconds and exposure happens in real time.
Custody security evolved in stages. First, the industry secured private keys in storage. It then moved beyond storage, embedding policy and multi-party controls to govern how those keys were used in execution. The next step is inevitable: apply the same zero-exposure and policy-driven discipline to every key and credential. In modern crypto operations, API keys, deployment credentials and execution secrets carry significant risk. Extending private key best practices across this broader surface is no longer optional; it is the defining challenge of execution risk.
In recent years, the execution risk has emerged as the single biggest vector for large-scale exploits. Cybercriminals are bypassing onchain security mechanisms in favor of the soft underbelly, namely the API keys, server credentials and other off-chain secrets needed to facilitate trading, code deployment, staking and custodial actions. Recent major breaches, including the Bybit hack, started with an off-chain hack and compromised credentials, which later led to on-chain loss of funds.
It’s big and structural. Asset managers, trading firms, custodians and payment companies connect to dozens of CEXs, DEXs, liquidity providers and other vendors simultaneously. Each integration introduces its own credentials, access controls and operational dependencies. Managing these spans across development, ops, trading, risk and security teams, which creates complexity that compounds over time.
Securing these operations is a never-ending struggle. Maintaining consistent security policies and multi-vendor access is a massive headache that’s largely manual, resulting in inevitable security gaps and configuration drift.
Related: Bitcoin is infrastructure, not digital gold
Execution risk is not inherent toautomation. It is a byproduct of how trading systems have historically been designed. In many centralized exchange environments, API keys and operational credentials are placed directly inside trading infrastructure to eliminate latency. For market makers and trading firms, speed is not a feature, it is the business model. Even marginal delay affects revenue.
Over time, full-key availability inside live systems became normalized as the simplest way to achieve high-performance execution. Credentials sit in a constant state of readiness so transactions can be authorized instantly. The issue is not that capital moves quickly. It is that unilateral authority is embedded inside operational infrastructure. And when authority is concentrated where execution happens, it becomes the most predictable attack vector.
Existing tools fall far short of what’s required, considering the complexity of modern execution environments.
While crypto exchanges, custodians and over-the-counter trading desks certainly employ robust security policies for specific operations, it’s incredibly difficult for them to synchronize those controls across such a fragmented ecosystem. In fact, it’s almost impossible to maintain consistent governance across forty-odd exchanges for any length of time. Since it’s done manually, in silo, errors are inevitable, and a single mistake can put millions of dollars in value at risk.
There’s also the counterparty risk to consider. Exchanges and custodians may have their own vulnerabilities in the shape of bugs, misconfigured infrastructure and inconsistent policy enforcement mechanisms. If a trading firm’s internal security code requires geofencing, but one of the exchanges it’s connected to has a buggy implementation of that control, it creates a risk at the point of execution.
The lesson the industry learned from private key security is clear: eliminate full key exposure and enforce strict policy controls around usage. Those principles must now extend beyond on-chain private keys to every credential capable of authorizing value movement.
The solution is not simply better secret storage. Secret managers were built for convenience; they return the full key to any authenticated process. In live execution environments, that model distributes authority to multiple components of the system at the very moment capital is in motion.
What is required is zero key exposure architecture systems where no single machine or employee ever holds unilateral control, combined with enforceable, context-aware policies governing how credentials are used. Multi-party computation (MPC) is one way to implement this model, but the principle is broader — expand private-key security best practices across the entire crypto execution layer.
Opinion by: Ido Sofer, founder and CEO at Sodot.
Key points:
Buyers are attempting to maintain BTC above the $66,500 level, but several analysts believe that the $60,000 level may crack.
Some major altcoins risk breaking below their immediate support levels, signaling that bears remain in control.
Buyers are attempting to push and maintain Bitcoin (BTC) above the $66,500 level, but are facing stiff resistance from the bears. Although recovery attempts are being sold into, the BTC supply in profit and loss metric suggests that BTC may be close to a bottom.
CryptoQuant analyst \"Darkfost\" said that there are currently about 8.2 million BTC in loss, compared to roughly 10.6 million BTC during the previous bear market. That suggests the market is at a comparable level of undervaluation seen during the previous bear phase.
However, not everyone believes that a bottom is in. Chartered Market Technician Aksel Kibar said in a post on X that BTC may sink to $52,500 if its developing bearish pattern breaks down.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d53b2-6e7f-739e-81c7-9593106cbe2b.png\")
During bear phases, select analysts turn overly negative and forecast gloom and doom for the markets.
One such projection is from Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone, who said in a post on X that BTC may collapse to $10,000. Contrary to that opinion, ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood said in an interview with CNBC that BTC will not see 85-95% collapses from its all-time high.
Could BTC and select major altcoins hold above their support levels? Let’s analyze the charts of the top 10 cryptocurrencies to find out.
BTC turned down from the moving averages on Thursday, and the bears are attempting to strengthen their position by pulling the price below the support line.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d53b2-72dd-7877-829b-a95247cbeddc.png\")
If they succeed, the bullish ascending triangle setup will be invalidated. That may force the aggressive bulls to close their positions. The BTC/USDT pair may then slump to the crucial $62,500 to $60,000 support zone.
The first sign of strength will be a close above the moving averages. That opens the doors for a rally to $72,000 and then to $76,000. A close above $76,000 will complete the ascending triangle pattern, propelling the pair toward $84,000.
Ether (ETH) failed to rise above the $2,200 resistance on Wednesday, indicating that the bears are aggressively defending the level.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d53b2-759b-75d6-83a4-c5c5fae0aab9.png\")
The flat moving averages and the relative strength index (RSI) just below the midpoint do not give a clear advantage either to the bulls or the bears. That suggests the ETH/USDT pair may swing between $2,200 and $1,916 for some time.
Buyers will have to push and maintain the ETH price above the $2,200 level to gain the upper hand. If they do that, the pair may climb to $2,400 and thereafter to $2,600. On the downside, a close below $1,916 might sink the pair to the critical $1,750 support.
BNB (BNB) turned down from the moving averages on Wednesday and dropped to the solid support at $570.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d53b2-7843-7637-8c2c-50d7c7a2232c.png\")
The downsloping 20-day exponential moving average ($620) and the RSI near the oversold territory signal that the path of least resistance is to the downside. If the $570 support breaks down, the BNB/USDT pair may resume the downtrend to $500.
This negative view will be invalidated in the near term if the BNB price turns up and breaks above the moving averages. That suggests the pair may continue to oscillate between $570 and $687 for a few more days.
XRP (XRP) turned down from the 20-day EMA ($1.36) on Thursday, and the bears are striving to pull the price below the $1.27 support.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d53b2-7b53-782f-bd43-56b9ae8d7519.png\")
If they manage to do that, the XRP/USDT pair may plummet to the Feb. 6 low of $1.11. This is a vital support for the bulls to defend, as a close below it may extend the decline to the support line of the descending channel pattern near $1.
Buyers are likely to have other plans. They will attempt to drive the XRP price above the moving averages, clearing the path for a recovery to the $1.61 level and then to the downtrend line.
Solana (SOL) has reached the support of the $76 to $95 range, indicating that the bears continue to exert pressure.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d53b2-7dab-7539-82b5-14a3935f9a86.png\")
Buyers are expected to aggressively defend the $76 level, but the relief rally is likely to face selling at the moving averages. If the SOL price turns down from the current level or the moving averages and breaks below $76, it signals that the bears are back in the driver’s seat. There is support at $67, but if the level cracks, the next stop may be $50.
Contrarily, if the SOL/USDT pair turns up and breaks above the moving averages, it signals that the range-bound action may continue for a while longer.
Dogecoin (DOGE) is getting squeezed between the moving averages and the $0.09 support, signaling a potential range expansion in the short term.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d53b2-840d-764c-bcb3-71179b8ba3ab.png\")
A close below the $0.09 support indicates that the bears are back in command. That may intensify selling and sink the DOGE/USDT pair to the Feb. 6 low of $0.08. Buyers will attempt to defend the $0.08 level, but if the bears prevail, the DOGE price may plunge to $0.06.
On the upside, a close above the moving averages suggests that the buyers have overpowered the bears. The pair may ascend to $0.10 and later to the stiff $0.12 resistance.
Hyperliquid (HYPE) is attempting to bounce off the 50-day simple moving average ($34.16), but the relief rally is expected to face selling at higher levels.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d53b2-87d3-7915-8532-84f2b853c3c9.png\")
The 20-day EMA ($37.10) has started to turn down, and the RSI has slipped into the negative zone, signaling that the bulls are losing their grip. If the HYPE price turns down and breaks below the 50-day SMA, the pullback may reach the $29.42 level.
Contrary to this assumption, if the price turns up and breaks above the 20-day EMA, it suggests that the bulls remain in control. The HYPE/USDT pair may march to $41.59 and subsequently to $43.76.
Related: Here’s what happened in crypto today
Sellers have maintained Cardano (ADA) below the $0.25 resistance but have failed to pull the price below the $0.23 level.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d53b2-8a8d-7d39-a20c-9b77794846d9.png\")
The 20-day EMA ($0.25) is sloping down gradually, and the RSI is in the negative territory, indicating a slight edge to the bears. If the ADA price turns down from the 20-day EMA and breaks below $0.23, it suggests that the bulls have given up. The ADA/USDT pair may drop to $0.22 and later to the support line near $0.18.
Conversely, if buyers propel the price above the moving averages, it suggests that the selling pressure is reducing. The pair may rally to the downtrend line, which is a vital resistance for the bears to defend.
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has dropped to the $443 level, which is a critical support for the bulls to defend.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d53b2-8d43-7d90-a188-4651ceb8a23b.png\")
Any bounce off the $443 level is expected to face selling at the moving averages. If the BCH price turns down sharply from the moving averages, it increases the likelihood of a drop below the $443 level. If that happens, the BCH/USDT pair will complete a bearish head-and-shoulders pattern. The pair may then tumble to the $375 level.
On the contrary, a close above the $486 level suggests that the bulls are back in the game. The pair may then jump to the $520 to $540 zone.
Chainlink (LINK) has been trading between the $8 and $10 level, indicating a balance between supply and demand.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d53b2-8ff3-7918-bbef-f621de52d088.png\")
If buyers thrust the price above the moving averages, the LINK/USDT pair may rise to the $10 resistance. Sellers are expected to defend the $10 level, as a close above it may propel the LINK price to $10.94 and then to $11.61.
Alternatively, if the price turns down from the moving averages and breaks below the $8 level, it signals that the bears have seized control. The pair may collapse to $7.15 and then to the $6 level.
Binance maintained its leading position in crypto derivatives trading in the first quarter of 2026, while decentralized exchange Hyperliquid broke into the top 10 venues by volume, according to CoinGlass.
Derivatives trading remained the dominant force in the crypto market in Q1 2026, totaling $18.6 trillion compared with $1.94 trillion in spot trading, according to a CoinGlass report on Friday.
The analysts said trading activity remained strong over the quarter, though liquidity and capital became even more concentrated at the top. “Q1 was not about euphoria. It was about recovery, concentration, and shifting market structure,” CoinGlass said.
The data shows how a small group of exchanges continue to dominate crypto derivatives, even as decentralized platforms begin to emerge as competitors.
Binance processed about $4.9 trillion in derivatives volume in Q1 2026, or roughly 35% of activity among the top 10 exchanges. In 2025, the exchange held about 29% of $85.7 trillion in total derivatives volume.
The exchange also dominated spot markets at a similar share, with Q1 volumes amounting to roughly $640 billion, or around 34% of total volumes among the top 10.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d538f-c6da-72b6-b8d1-42087618b124.png\")
Binance’s dominance points to its resilience despite controversy during the quarter, after several crypto community members, including OKX founder and CEO Star Xu, alleged that it played a major role in the mass liquidation event of Oct. 10, 2025.
Related: Binance sues Wall Street Journal amid report of DOJ Iran probe
Binance repeatedly denied the claims, saying the crash was driven primarily by macroeconomic factors, market maker risk controls and network congestion.
Hyperliquid, a perpetual decentralized exchange, reached a key milestone in the first quarter of 2026, breaking into the top 10 derivatives exchanges by volume roughly three years after its launch.
The platform recorded about $492.7 billion in trading volume during the quarter, securing its place among the industry’s largest derivatives venues, including Binance, OKX, Bybit, Gate, BitGet, BingX, LBank, WhiteBIT and Coinbase.
Related: Wallet in Telegram launches perpetual futures trading with Lighter
The milestone comes after steady growth across previous quarters. In its 2025 report, CoinGlass said Hyperliquid nearly dominated the entire perp DEX sector, with its market share reaching up to 70% at times.
Perp DEX activity also expanded rapidly in 2025, with volumes nearly tripling over the year and accounting for up to 90% of volumes across major derivatives exchanges.
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", "description": "Crypto derivatives reached $18.6 trillion in the first quarter of 2026 compared with $1.94 trillion in spot trading, with Binance leading the market, according to CoinGlass.", "published": "2026-04-03T14:56:06+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "derivatives" }, { "slug": "leverage" }, { "slug": "binance" }, { "slug": "okx" }, { "slug": "bybit" }, { "slug": "industry" } ], "slug": "binance-derivatives-q1-hyperliquid-enters-top-10-coinglass", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "259082" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Ethereum L2s need responsive pricing to scale, says Offchain Labs", "leadText": "Edward Felten said Ethereum L2s need responsive pricing to scale, as Arbitrum’s new model tests an alternative to EIP-1559-style fee swings.", "author": { "slug": "zoltan-vardai" }, "bodyText": "Ethereum layer-2 networks need “responsive pricing” to scale to billions of users and reduce the fee swings that still accompany congestion, Offchain Labs co-founder Edward Felten said during a keynote at EthCC 2026.
Ethereum’s EIP-1559 upgrade launched in August 2021, as part of the London hard fork. It reformed the Ethereum fee market by modifying the gas fee limit and introduced a feature that burns part of the transaction fees, removing them permanently from circulation.
Felten said gas-price swings are still the main mechanism for protecting networks from being overrun during periods of heavy demand, even though that produces the kind of fee volatility mainstream users tend to reject.
“[With responsive pricing], you can see more traffic at lower gas prices without overrunning the infrastructure.”
Volatile gas prices have long been a barrier to mass adoption, particularly for users accustomed to fixed or predictable transaction costs in traditional financial systems.
The issue matters because Ethereum’s scaling story is no longer just about adding more throughput. It is increasingly about whether layer-2 networks can make transaction costs predictable enough for mainstream-style apps while still pricing congestion honestly enough to protect infrastructure under heavy demand. Arbitrum’s dynamic pricing rollout is now one of the first live tests of that tradeoff.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5358-97e9-7f07-b9e8-402a8c9af0a9.jpg\")
Arbitrum One adopted dynamic pricing in January. It described the model as an “Arbitrum platform direction to make fees more predictable under demand by aligning prices with real network bottlenecks.”
Related: Gavin Wood’s biggest hope: Free crypto transactions and Web3 tech worldwide
Felten shared multiple charts showing how Arbitrum gas fees remained lower during peak network volumes than fees on the Base network and other L2s that rely on EIP-1559.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d535b-faa6-75a1-8c71-8ea303f9b93a.jpg\")
Arbitrum One is the largest L2 with $15.2 billion in TVL, while Coinbase’s Base Chain is second with $10.9 billion, according to data from L2beat. L2s are securing over $39.7 billion in cumulative TVL, up 4.6% over the past year.
While responsive pricing may be more scalable and more transparent about underlying costs, its biggest downside is lower predictability than EIP-1559, according to Julian Kors, a senior developer and founder of execution workspace startup Pulsar Spaces.
The debate is not about one model being better, but whether networks optimise for “predictability and mechanism design purity or for efficiency and real-time cost alignment. EIP-1559 does the first very well. Responsive pricing leans into the second,” he told Cointelegraph.
Related: Ethereum Foundation accelerates 70,000 ETH staking plan after BitMine sale
Jerome de Tychey, president of Ethereum France and EthCC, told Cointelegraph that responsive pricing could improve user experience by making fees more closely reflect actual network demand.
Cyprien Grau, project lead at gasless Ethereum L2 Status Network, agreed, calling the new pricing model a “real improvement in fee accuracy.” However, the model still relies on a “fee market,” meaning that users may still face variable costs and gas spikes during congestion, he told Cointelegraph.
“It doesn’t solve the structural problem: L2 gas fees trend toward zero as scaling on L1 and L2s improves and competition intensifies. Responsive pricing makes the decline smoother, but you’re still building a revenue model on a depreciating asset.”
Grau added that responsive pricing is the “most advanced version of the gas model,” but said the gas model needs replacing. “L2s that scale to billions of users will be the ones where users never think about gas at all, and where networks' economics don't depend on charging them for it,” he added.
The fee model debate comes as parts of the Ethereum ecosystem are already rethinking the original rollup-centric scaling thesis. In February, Vitalik Buterin argued that some layer-2 assumptions no longer held and that future scaling should rely more heavily on the mainnet and native rollups.
L2 networks were created to scale Ethereum and offload part of the transaction load from the mainnet. However, Ethereum is now reconsidering its L2-centric approach, as these networks have siphoned significant economic value from the mainnet.
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", "description": "Edward Felten says Ethereum L2s need to adopt responsive pricing models to scale to billions of users, but industry watchers warn that the new gas fee structure introduces other shortcomings.", "published": "2026-04-03T14:51:29+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "blockchain" }, { "slug": "ethereum" }, { "slug": "vitalik-buterin" }, { "slug": "adoption" }, { "slug": "fees" }, { "slug": "scalability" }, { "slug": "ethereum-2-0" }, { "slug": "layer2" }, { "slug": "transaction-fee" }, { "slug": "arbitrum" }, { "slug": "ethcc" } ], "slug": "ethereum-l2s-responsive-pricing-scale-billions", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "259077" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Solo Bitcoin miner bags $210K Bitcoin block reward", "leadText": "A CKPool-connected solo miner just landed a $210,000 Bitcoin block reward, one of only 20 solo‑mined blocks in the past year, as listed miners sell BTC to stay afloat.", "author": { "slug": "christina-comben" }, "bodyText": "A solo Bitcoin miner secured a roughly $210,000 block reward on Thursday, proving that the so-called “mining lottery” is still paying out even if industrial operators dominate the network.
The miner, connected to CKPool’s solo service, found block 943,411 and earned 3.139 BTC in subsidy and transaction fees, according to data from block explorer mempool.space.
Solo mining remains rare. Statistics compiled by Bennet’s tracker show that solo mining pools have found just 20 Bitcoin (BTC) blocks over the last 12 months, paying out a total of 62.96 BTC, roughly one win every 18.7 days on average. The longest “drought” between blocks was 58 days, and the previous solo win came on Feb. 28.
The win comes as Bitcoin mining grows increasingly competitive. Network difficulty, the measure of how hard it is to find a block, recently recorded its steepest adjustment since February, falling about 7.7% before rebounding 3.87% in the past 24 hours, reflecting weaker hashrate and briefly improving miners’ odds.
Even so, current difficulty levels remain near historic highs, meaning the probability of any single solo miner discovering a block is still vanishingly small.
Related: Solo Bitcoin miner bags over $200K block reward using rented hashrate
Public trackers like CoinWarz show Bitcoin’s difficulty has climbed orders of magnitude over the past decade, with only brief downward adjustments when miners switch off unprofitable rigs or redirect machines to other workloads such as artificial intelligence.
![\"Bitcoin](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5384-d809-7a93-aff2-4f65fdb05337.png\")
As difficulty grinds higher and input costs rise, the economics of mining increasingly favor large, well-capitalized operators over hobbyists.
Major listed Bitcoin miners are responding by reshaping their balance sheets and fleet strategies rather than betting on luck. Riot Platforms sold 3,778 BTC during the first quarter of 2026, according to a Thursday release, adding to a number of crypto miners and firms that have sold Bitcoin recently, including MARA Holdings, Genius Group and Nakamoto Holdings.
Against that institutional backdrop, the CKPool win stands out as a reminder that individuals can still, on rare occasions, beat the odds.
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", "description": "A CKPool solo miner hit block 943,411 for a $210K reward, one of just 20 solo‑mined Bitcoin blocks in 12 months.", "published": "2026-04-03T14:45:10+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "bitcoin" }, { "slug": "cryptocurrencies" }, { "slug": "mining" }, { "slug": "bitcoin-price" }, { "slug": "bitcoin-mining" }, { "slug": "mining-pools" } ], "slug": "solo-bitcoin-miner-bags-210k-bitcoin-block", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "259072" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Here’s what happened in crypto today", "leadText": "Need to know what happened in crypto today? Here is the latest news on daily trends and events impacting Bitcoin price, blockchain, DeFi, NFTs, Web3 and crypto regulation.", "author": { "slug": "cointelegraph" }, "bodyText": "Today in crypto, community banking groups pushed back against the approval of Coinbase’s national bank charter, arguing that it falls short of the industry’s regulatory standards. Meanwhile, the fallout from the Drift Protocol exploit continues and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said tokenization in finance removes friction but introduces risks.
US community banking groups are pushing back against the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (OCC) conditional approval of a national trust charter for Coinbase, arguing the decision could weaken regulatory standards. The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) said the move may allow crypto companies to operate under a different framework than traditional banks.
The group raised concerns that granting a trust charter to a crypto company could blur the lines between banking and digital asset services. According to the ICBA, Coinbase’s business model does not align with the legal requirements for institutions seeking such approval.
Community banks also warned that the decision could create an uneven playing field, where crypto companies gain access to bank-like privileges without being subject to the same level of oversight. This, they argue, could introduce new risks to the broader financial system.
The opposition highlights ongoing friction between traditional financial institutions and crypto companies as regulators continue shaping how digital asset companies fit within the US banking system.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d54c7-07f7-7f37-94c0-e4b08d48eee3.png\")
Drift Protocol, a Solana-based decentralized exchange (DEX), said Friday it had opened onchain contact with wallets tied to funds stolen in the exploit that outside firms have estimated at roughly $280 million to $286 million.
Drift said on X that it had initiated onchain contact with wallets holding the stolen Ether (ETH), seeking to open a line of communication.
The team sent onchain messages from its Ethereum address (0x0934faC) to four wallets linked to the exploiter at the time of publication, urging the attacker to reach out via Blockscan chat. “We are ready to speak,” Drift said.
Onchain messaging has become a common tactic in exploit response, allowing protocols to communicate directly with attackers while preserving anonymity. In past cases, such as the Euler Finance hack, similar outreach led to the partial recovery of funds.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d52ca-e541-7a9c-bd3b-9f669bef184f.png\")
The International Monetary Fund said tokenization has the potential to remove friction and boost transparency in finance, but warned that the technology could also create challenges that affect financial stability.
\"The net effect of tokenization on financial stability is uncertain,” the IMF said in a 23-page report on Thursday, stating that “atomic settlement and enhanced transparency reduce some traditional risks, but speed and automation introduce new ones.”
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d517f-63e3-7bac-8ac7-3283906dbac6.png\")
More than $27.6 billion worth of real-world assets, minus stablecoins, is currently tokenized onchain, data from RWA.xyz shows. Boston Consulting Group estimated in 2022 that the tokenization market could rise to $16 trillion by 2030, while McKinsey & Co in 2024 predicted a more conservative $2 trillion over the same time frame.
The IMF acknowledged that tokenization expands how securities and other financial products are issued, traded, settled and managed but said it shifts risks from the banking system to shared ledgers and smart contract code.
“Stress events in tokenized markets are likely to unfold faster than in traditional systems, leaving less time for discretionary intervention.\"
The agency also said tokenization offers opportunities in emerging markets, such as faster cross-border payments and financial inclusion but added that it “raises the risk of volatile capital flows, rapid currency substitution, and erosion of monetary sovereignty.”
", "description": "Today in crypto, US community banks formally opposed Coinbase's charter, Drift Protocol contacted the hacker behind a $280 million exploit and the IMF said tokenization offers benefits and risks.", "published": "2026-04-03T14:19:48+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "coinbase" }, { "slug": "cryptocurrencies" }, { "slug": "business" }, { "slug": "security" }, { "slug": "banks" }, { "slug": "imf" }, { "slug": "dao" }, { "slug": "scams" }, { "slug": "hacks" }, { "slug": "tokenization" }, { "slug": "industry" } ], "slug": "what-happened-in-crypto-today", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "110589" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Decentralized email platform Dmail to cease services on May 15", "leadText": "Dmail Network will shut down on May 15 after citing high infrastructure costs, failed fundraising and weak token utility.", "author": { "slug": "ezra-reguerra" }, "bodyText": "Decentralized email platform Dmail Network is shutting down after five years of operations, citing high infrastructure costs, weak monetization, failed funding efforts and limited token utility.
The platform said it will gradually cease all services starting May 15, and urged users to export their data before then. It said all nodes will shut down after that date, making emails and accounts inaccessible.
Dmail Network positioned itself as a Web3 communication platform focused on decentralized, wallet-based email, encrypted messaging and onchain notifications. In January 2025, DappRadar ranked Dmail second among AI DApps, with 4.9 million unique active wallets for the month.
Dmail’s closure suggests that user activity alone was not enough to sustain an infrastructure-heavy Web3 product once high operating costs, weak monetization and failed fundraising converged.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5369-4035-7ab6-bed6-15155b612caf.jpg\")
Dmail said the economics of running a decentralized communication platform had become increasingly difficult to sustain. In its shutdown note, the company said bandwidth, storage and computing costs consumed a large share of its budget, with the expenses rising as users grew.
The company said it explored different paid models and monetization paths but failed to find a business model users were willing to support at scale.
Related: Big Tech firms back new x402 Foundation to advance agentic AI adoption
Dmail said that worsening market conditions added to the pressure. The team said multiple financing rounds failed, acquisition efforts fell through and funding was nearing exhaustion. It said departures among core staff left the team unable to keep maintaining its infrastructure.
It added that the project’s token never developed a clear, large-scale use case and that its economic design failed to create a self-sustaining loop. Following the announcement, Dmail Network’s token dropped to an all-time low of $0.0002067, according to CoinGecko.
Dmail’s shutdown comes amid a recent wave of closures across Web3, as projects struggle with weak demand and funding pressures.
On March 18, DAO tooling platform Tally said it was winding down after concluding that there was no viable market for its products. On March 24, development company Balancer Labs said it was shutting down four months after an exploit that drained over $100 million.
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", "description": "Dmail Network is shutting down its decentralized email platform after five years, citing high costs, weak monetization and failed funding efforts.", "published": "2026-04-03T14:05:35+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "blockchain" }, { "slug": "decentralization" }, { "slug": "dapps" }, { "slug": "ai" }, { "slug": "email" } ], "slug": "dmail-network-shutdown-decentralized-email-costs-funding-failure", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "259057" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Centralizing crypto: Why Malta’s clash with ESMA is about more than one small state", "leadText": "A plan to move supervision of major crypto asset service providers to the France-based ESMA is testing MiCA’s balance between EU-level control and national-level decision-making.", "author": { "slug": "christina-comben" }, "bodyText": "Europe’s next crypto battle is no longer about whether to regulate the industry, but who gets to hold the pen. European Union leaders are weighing a European Commission proposal to hand direct supervision of the bloc’s largest crypto asset service providers (CASPs) to the Paris-based European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), shifting front-line control away from national regulators.
France, Austria and Italy believe the move is overdue. In a joint September 2025 paper, their market authorities called for “a stronger European framework,” arguing centralized oversight is needed to address “major differences” in how countries authorize firms and curb regulatory shopping.
Malta’s Financial Services Authority (MFSA) is not convinced. A spokesperson told Cointelegraph it is “premature to introduce structural changes” like centralized supervision. The Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) regulation has only recently become fully applicable, and its “impact on the market and market players is still being assessed,” they said.
The dispute matters because MiCA lets companies win authorization in one member state and then passport services across the EU. That means the question of who supervises crypto firms is no longer just administrative, but goes to how Europe will balance market integration, investor protection and national regulatory authority.
While a recent Bloomberg report framed the fight as one small state against the commission, Ian Gauci of Maltese law firm GTG, one of the architects of Malta’s original crypto rulebook, told Cointelegraph, “That is not what this is.” He said Malta’s arguments “are not jurisdictional” and “go to the structure itself and how it will behave wherever it is applied in the Union.” The MFSA said its position was not about national advantage but about “regulatory timing and effectiveness” and preserving Europe’s attractiveness to crypto firms.
Related: What happens as Europe enforces MiCA and the US delays crypto rules
The ESMA already leads the supervisory convergence work, coordinating peer reviews of national authorities, including a fast-track review of one of Malta’s CASP authorizations, widely reported to be OKX. The review found Malta met expectations on supervisory settings, but that the firm’s authorization “should have been more thorough.”
![\"Europe,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5333-5cac-7b28-887e-b4f2a79f0663.png\")
Supporters of centralization say that the episode makes the case. A spokesperson from the ESMA told Cointelegraph that a single supervisor for major cross-border companies would deliver “more efficient and harmonized supervision,” strengthen investor protection and reduce “the risk of forum shopping.” France, Austria and Italy similarly warned in their position paper that divergent practices could undermine investor protection and Europe’s digital asset market.
Gauci said he was not opposed to a stronger EU-level role where it is justified. But he argued that centralization should be targeted at genuinely systemic cross-border firms with clearly identified risks, rather than applied as a blanket fix for uneven supervision.
OKX rejects the idea that companies pick smaller jurisdictions to capture regulators. Its European CEO, Erald Ghoos, told Cointelegraph that, unlike some competitors, the exchange had been supervised by Malta under a high-standard regime since 2021 and its MiCA authorization reflected a multi-year relationship, “not an expedited process.” With MiCA still rolling out, he argued that there was no evidence the current model is failing, making centralization look more like a “political decision.”
Related: What happens as Europe enforces MiCA and the US delays crypto rules
Ghoos said the case for concentrating supervisory power at the EU level had not yet been demonstrated.
Gauci accepts that inconsistencies exist but argues that the solution is to use existing tools. “Make peer reviews bite,” set timelines and impose consequences for persistent failure, rather than rewriting MiCA’s allocation of powers, he said.
His deeper concern is structural: Large firms operate as single systems, but the proposal would split oversight across ESMA, national authorities and the Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA), while the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) expects an integrated view of information technology risk. “Once you split supervision like this, that unity disappears,” he warned, leaving accountability fragmented in a crisis.
The real question, he said, is whether Europe values supervisory depth or scale. Early movers built expertise and proximity in a fast-moving industry; strip that away too quickly, and Europe risks replacing it with distance, removing the “incentive for jurisdictions to invest in serious supervisory capacity in the first place,” and encouraging the offshore drift policymakers want to avoid.
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", "description": "The EU wants ESMA to supervise major CASPPs, but Malta’s MFSA and lawyer Ian Gauci warn that centralizing crypto oversight risks fragmentation and offshore drift.", "published": "2026-04-03T13:51:51+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "europe" }, { "slug": "esma" }, { "slug": "cryptocurrency-exchange" }, { "slug": "european-union" }, { "slug": "malta" }, { "slug": "mica" }, { "slug": "regulation" } ], "slug": "centralizing-crypto-why-malta-clash-with-esma", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "259052" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Aave avoided bad debt by shifting risk to borrowers: Bank of Canada study", "leadText": "A Bank of Canada staff paper found Aave V3 avoided bad debt in 2024, but said the model pushed losses onto borrowers during liquidations.", "author": { "slug": "ezra-reguerra" }, "bodyText": "A Bank of Canada staff paper found that Aave V3 reported zero non-performing loans in 2024, with overcollateralization and automated liquidations helping prevent lender losses in its Ethereum lending market.
Using transaction-level data from Jan. 27, 2023, to May 6, 2025, the study found that positions were typically liquidated before collateral values fell below outstanding debt, helping contain lender losses across the sample.
But the model came with a tradeoff, the paper said. While it protected lenders from unrecovered losses, it also shifted risk onto borrowers and constrained capital efficiency compared with traditional lending systems.
According to the paper, Aave V3’s design relies on automated risk controls rather than traditional underwriting, requiring borrowers to post more collateral than they borrow and liquidating positions when they breach risk thresholds.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5310-b6e0-717f-8981-47aa3b719fb7.jpg\")
According to the paper, Aave V3’s lending activity was not driven solely by users seeking liquidity. It found that recursive leverage accounted for over 20% of total borrowed volume and 8.2% of borrowing transactions during the sample period.
Recursive leverage involves repeatedly borrowing against collateral, redeploying the borrowed assets as new collateral and borrowing again to amplify exposure.
Related: Aave V4 goes live on Ethereum after governance vote clears rollout
The study said the dynamic made borrowers more exposed when markets turned. According to the paper, liquidations on Aave V3 tended to occur in concentrated waves, with four assets accounting for 90% of total liquidated value.
This includes Wrapped Ether (WETH), Wrapped Staked Ether (wstETH), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) and Wrapped eETH (weETH).
The paper estimated that borrower losses during major liquidation events could be significant. It said liquidation fees typically ranged from 5% to 10% of liquidated value, while missed gains from subsequent price recoveries pushed combined losses to about 10% to 30% in some cases.
The staff paper suggested that while the design for Aave V3 helped prevent unrecovered bad debt in the sample, it did so by exposing borrowers to abrupt losses when collateral prices fell sharply.
Cointelegraph reached out to Aave for comment but did not receive a response before publication.
Magazine: Are DeFi devs liable for the illegal activity of others on their platforms?
", "description": "A Bank of Canada staff paper says Aave V3 on Ethereum had no unrecovered bad debt from Jan. 27, 2023, to May 6, 2025, by using excess collateral and rapid liquidations.", "published": "2026-04-03T12:51:18+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "blockchain" }, { "slug": "study" }, { "slug": "ethereum" }, { "slug": "bank-of-canada" }, { "slug": "lending" }, { "slug": "defi" }, { "slug": "aave" } ], "slug": "aave-v3-bad-debt-liquidations-borrower-losses-study", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "259037" }, { "category": { "slug": "markets" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Bitcoin 'done' with 85% crashes, says Cathie Wood amid new $34K target", "leadText": "ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood said that Bitcoin as a \"proven\" asset would no longer experience drawdowns of 85% or more from all-time highs.", "author": { "slug": "william-suberg" }, "bodyText": "Bitcoin (BTC) is “done” with drawdowns of 85% or more from all-time highs, says ARK Invest CEO, Cathie Wood.
Key points:
Bitcoin will not see another correction of 85% or more versus its latest all-time high, Cathie Wood argues.
A new prediction sees $34,000 becoming the next BTC price bottom.
Bitcoin bear-market seasonality hints that a reversal could come this month.
In an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box segment on April 1, Wood stayed calm about double-digit BTC price losses.
“Believe it or not, in the Bitcoin community, down 50% — if that’s as far as it goes — they’ll consider that a real victory,” she said.
“Because you’re right; the 85-95% collapses associated with a very new technology — that’s done. This is a proven technology, it’s a proven monetary system and it’s a new asset class.”
Wood, a longtime Bitcoin bull, was speaking as Bitcoin circled its old $69,000 all-time highs from 2021.
Those preceded a year-long bear market in which BTC/USD lost nearly 80% before bottoming at $15,600. That marked the latest such correction, with bear markets typically bringing losses around the 80% mark.
Data from onchain analytics platform Glassnode shows that the current bear market has yet to match historical patterns with maximum downside versus Bitcoin’s $126,200 record from October 2025 at 52%.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d530a-74b2-73c9-9d14-bcc18e7bda2d.png\")
Responding to Wood, analyst Tony Severino predicted that 2026 would bring a price bottom equal to a 72% drawdown.
“Correct, -72% max drawdown next =$34,000,” he wrote on X.
That figure exceeds commonly held predictions by traders for where Bitcoin’s next generational floor will be. As Cointelegraph reported, consensus favors the area between $40,000 and $50,000.
This week, however, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike McGlone warned that price may already be trending toward seven-year lows.
Continuing the bear-market comparison, data from network economist Timothy Peterson revealed that April could mark some form of inflection point for price.
Related: Bitcoin risks new lows as US dollar targets highest level since April 2025
A chart uploaded to X this week shows April typically being a recovery month during bearish phases.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5309-8a13-7343-b2f2-936e909795fb.png\")
The March monthly close, meanwhile, ended a five-month losing streak for BTC/USD with modest gains of 1.8%.
Drift Protocol, a Solana-based decentralized exchange (DEX), said Friday it had opened onchain contact with wallets tied to funds stolen in the exploit that outside firms have estimated at roughly $280 million to $286 million.
Drift said on X that it had initiated onchain contact with wallets holding the stolen Ether (ETH), seeking to open a line of communication.
The team sent onchain messages from its Ethereum address (0x0934faC) to four wallets linked to the exploiter at the time of publication, urging the attacker to reach out via Blockscan chat. “We are ready to speak,” Drift said.
Onchain messaging has become a common tactic in exploit response, allowing protocols to communicate directly with attackers while preserving anonymity. In past cases, such as the Euler Finance hack, similar outreach led to the partial recovery of funds.
Drift’s communication came hours after an unknown sender using the ENS name readnow.eth also reached out to wallets linked to the attacker on Thursday via onchain messages.
The sender claimed to know the identities behind the attack and demanded a payment of 1,000 ETH in exchange for withholding information.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d52ca-e716-717d-96e5-1a29602a06e6.png\")
The claims could not be independently verified and may represent an attempt to mislead or pressure the wallet holder. The incident highlights how, alongside official communications, unverified messages can circulate onchain after crypto exploits.
According to SolanaFloor, Drift’s exploit has so far affected at least 20 Solana protocols, including the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Gauntlet, which was estimated to be impacted to the scale of $6.4 million.
Blockchain security platform Cyvers said the impact was still expanding as of Friday morning, with no funds being recovered 48 hours past the attack.
Cyvers said that the attack was likely a “weeks-long, staged operation,” noting that the attacker set up durable nonces, a Solana feature allowing users to pre-sign transactions for future execution, days before the exploit.
Related: Crypto hackers steal $169M from 34 DeFi protocols in Q1: DefiLlama
“This closely mirrors the Bybit hack, different technique, same root issue: signers unknowingly approving malicious transactions,” Cyvers added.
Some industry observers, including Ledger chief technology officer Charles Guillemet, suggested the exploit may involve North Korea-linked actors, though details remain unconfirmed.
Magazine: Nobody knows if quantum secure cryptography will even work
South Korean brokerage Korea Investment & Securities (KIS) is reviewing a potential stake in crypto exchange Coinone, according to Korean media reports and company comments, though no deal has been finalized.
Citing people familiar with the matter, the Korea Herald reported that KIS started engaging with regulators and politicians as part of a broader process tied to a potential investment in Coinone. Coinone also said no specific transaction had been decided.
The news comes as South Korea considers a proposal to cap major shareholders’ stakes in domestic crypto exchanges at 20%, a move that could force ownership changes across parts of the sector if enacted. Coinone Chairman Cha Myung-hoon reportedly controls about 53.44% of the exchange, meaning a stake sale could become one way to adapt if the proposed cap advances into law.
The move would position KIS alongside its rival, Mirae Asset Group, which agreed to acquire a controlling stake in crypto exchange Korbit, according to a February filing. KIS recorded a net profit of over 2 trillion won (about $1.3 billion) in 2025, making it a strong candidate for a potential stake acquisition in Coinone, Hankyung reported.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5272-e4b2-7211-bb91-a28976d164a1.jpg\")
The potential deal unfolds as South Korea moves to reshape ownership structures in its crypto exchange market.
On March 4, the South Korean government and ruling party agreed on a plan to cap ownership stakes of major shareholders in local exchanges at 20%. According to Herald Economy, the Democratic Party of Korea’s digital asset task force and the Financial Services Commission (FSC) agreed to set the maximum shareholding limit at 20% after discussions.
Related: South Korea tax agency seeks private crypto custodian after security lapses
Under the proposal, exchanges would have three years from the law’s enforcement to adjust their ownership structures if the measure is passed.
With Cha holding more than half of Coinone, the proposed cap could eventually require him to reduce his stake. The Herald said he could still retain management control even if a sale proceeds.
The reported talks follow other recent moves by major South Korean companies to secure positions in the crypto sector.
In late 2025, Naver Financial disclosed plans for a roughly $10.3 billion all-stock deal to acquire Dunamu, the operator of Upbit. On March 30, Naver Financial delayed its planned share swap with Dunamu, as regulatory reviews continued and trading volumes declined.
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", "description": "New ownership rules could force Chairman Cha Myung-hoon to trim his 53% stake, though he would keep management control, according to The Korea Herald.", "published": "2026-04-03T09:58:14+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "law" }, { "slug": "south-korea" }, { "slug": "cryptocurrency-exchange" }, { "slug": "regulation" } ], "slug": "korea-investment-securities-coinone-stake-report", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258992" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Crypto hackers steal $169M from 34 DeFi protocols in Q1: DefiLlama", "leadText": "January saw the largest attack against a DeFi protocol of the quarter, the $40 million private key compromise of portfolio management platform Step Finance.", "author": { "slug": "stephen-katte" }, "bodyText": "Crypto hackers stole over $168.6 million in cryptocurrency from 34 decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols in the first quarter of 2026, falling significantly from the same period last year, according to data from DefiLlama.
The $40 million private key compromise of Step Finance in January was the largest exploit of the quarter, the data shows, followed by a smart contract manipulation that drained $26.4 million in ether (ETH) from Truebit on Jan. 8. The third-largest was a private key compromise targeting stablecoin issuer Resolv Labs on March 21.
The quarterly figure is low given that the industry saw $1.58 billion stolen in the first quarter of 2025, with the bulk coming from the $1.4 billion Bybit exploit. However, experts warn that crypto hacks aren’t tied to specific periods within a year.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5209-3dc4-76a6-93c0-1eda661721ca.png\")
Nick Percoco, the chief security officer at crypto exchange Kraken, told Cointelegraph that cybercriminal activity in crypto tends to rise around market and event-driven cycles rather than fixed periods.
Threat actors are also drawn to areas where liquidity is concentrated, meaning attack spikes often follow wherever value is accumulating fastest, according to Percoco.
“Bull markets, major product launches and fast-moving growth phases all create more attractive conditions for attackers because more value is at stake and new infrastructure can introduce risk,” he said.
“That said, attacks are not confined to just these periods. Vulnerabilities can be exploited in any market environment, particularly in complex or rapidly evolving systems, underlining that security in crypto must be continuous.”
North Korea-linked actors have been a persistent threat to crypto investors and Web3-native companies alike.
Hackers affiliated with the organization have been suspected of numerous attacks, including the Wednesday attack on Drift Protocol, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange that lost an estimated $285 million to a private key leak.
Related: Hacked crypto tokens drop 61% on average and rarely recover, Immunefi report says
Percoco said the threat landscape is a mix of actors with different levels of sophistication, highly coordinated groups targeting core infrastructure, organized cybercriminal networks and opportunistic hackers scanning for weaknesses in smart contracts and client-facing systems.
“It is a broad and evolving mix, but they are ultimately targeting the same thing: global, liquid and accessible value. Targeting is rarely purely random. In many cases, attackers are deliberate in how they assess infrastructure, code, access controls and even human behavior,” he said.
“At the same time, crypto’s transparency makes it easier for opportunistic actors to spot weaknesses as they emerge. The most attractive targets tend to be those combining large concentrations of value, technical complexity and gaps in operational security.”
Security experts previously told Cointelegraph that 2026 would likely see an increase in sophisticated credential theft, social engineering, and AI-powered attacks.
Magazine: All 21 million Bitcoin is at risk from quantum computers
", "description": "At least 34 DeFi protocols were exploited in the first quarter of 2026, with hackers stealing more than $168 million over the three months, a sharp decline from the same time last year.", "published": "2026-04-03T07:40:53+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "cryptocurrencies" }, { "slug": "business" }, { "slug": "scams" }, { "slug": "hacks" }, { "slug": "defi" }, { "slug": "scams-and-cybercrime" } ], "slug": "defi-hacks-169m-q1-2026-crypto-exploits-decline", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258972" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Bitcoin supply in profit heads to ‘true bear market’ levels", "leadText": "CryptoQuant data shows there are 8.2 million Bitcoin currently at a loss, which is still under the amount of Bitcoin at a loss during the 2022 bear market.", "author": { "slug": "martin-young" }, "bodyText": "The amount of Bitcoin supply in profit and loss is now getting closer to levels typical of a bear market, according to a CryptoQuant analyst.
There are currently about 11.2 million Bitcoin (BTC) in profit. The previous bear market recorded 9 million BTC in profit at its lowest point, CryptoQuant analyst \"Darkfost\" said Thursday.
CryptoQuant data also shows there are about 8.2 million Bitcoin at a loss, with Glassnode data confirming it’s at levels not seen since late 2022.
“This is quite significant, considering that during the last bear market this figure reached about 10.6 million BTC,” Darkfost said.
Analysts have been debating whether Bitcoin has further to fall this year amid growing global turmoil. Bitcoin metrics that show a movement toward previous cycle lows could suggest that a market bottom is getting closer.
“This suggests that the market is reaching a notable level of undervaluation, comparable to the conditions observed during the previous bear market,” the analyst added.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d51c9-5a4a-7dcf-a4b1-0d7731268f8c.jpg\")
However, Andri Fauzan Adziima, research lead at the Bitrue exchange, argued the data signals “increasing market stress, not immediate undervaluation.”
True capitulation bottoms saw deeper pain, he told Cointelegraph. The supply in loss in 2022 was greater than 50% and the supply in profit was around 45% or lower, while metrics such as net unrealized profit/loss (NUPL) and market value to realized value ratio (MVRV) were at “extremes.”
“Current data points to early/mid-bear transition (potential structural bottom near $55,000), with more downside or consolidation likely before a full reset.”
Related: Bitcoin’s drawdown is ‘less dramatic’ this cycle, Fidelity says
Data also shows Bitcoin has declined by about 52% from its all-time high this cycle, much less than previous bear markets, which saw 77% to 84% drawdowns from their cycle highs.
Bitcoin author Timothy Peterson commented on X that Bitcoin “tends to struggle when the dollar is strong, and the Chinese yuan is weak.”
He added that this was due to tighter global liquidity, with higher dollar yields attracting capital into cash and bonds and cautious investor sentiment as China eases policy.
That only changes when US interest rates fall and “dollar yield loses its attractiveness,” which is not likely until the second half of 2026 or more likely 2027, he said.
The US dollar index (DXY) has gained about 5% over the past two months, according to TradingView.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d51c9-5ecc-7aa4-8cfe-26dbf9a4ef8d.jpg\")
Magazine: Your guide to surviving this mini-crypto winter
", "description": "Bitcoin's supply in profit and loss has hit levels typical of bear market lows, with analysts split on whether a bottom is near or more pain lies ahead.", "published": "2026-04-03T06:38:39+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "bitcoin" }, { "slug": "dollar" }, { "slug": "bitcoin-price" }, { "slug": "markets" }, { "slug": "btc-markets" } ], "slug": "bitcoin-supply-profit-loss-at-true-bear-market-levels-analyst", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258967" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Tokenization makes finance more efficient but introduces risks: IMF", "leadText": "The IMF said tokenization could improve cross-border payments and financial inclusion in emerging economies but cited concerns over volatility and the “erosion of monetary sovereignty.”", "author": { "slug": "brayden-lindrea" }, "bodyText": "The International Monetary Fund said tokenization has the potential to remove friction and boost transparency in finance, but warned that the technology could also create challenges that affect financial stability.
\"The net effect of tokenization on financial stability is uncertain,” the IMF said in a 23-page report on Thursday, stating that “atomic settlement and enhanced transparency reduce some traditional risks, but speed and automation introduce new ones.”
More than $27.6 billion worth of real-world assets, minus stablecoins, is currently tokenized onchain, data from RWA.xyz shows. Boston Consulting Group estimated in 2022 that the tokenization market could rise to $16 trillion by 2030, while McKinsey & Co in 2024 predicted a more conservative $2 trillion over the same time frame.
The IMF acknowledged that tokenization expands how securities and other financial products are issued, traded, settled and managed but said it shifts risks from the banking system to shared ledgers and smart contract code.
“Stress events in tokenized markets are likely to unfold faster than in traditional systems, leaving less time for discretionary intervention.\"
The agency also said tokenization offers opportunities in emerging markets, such as faster cross-border payments and financial inclusion but added that it “raises the risk of volatile capital flows, rapid currency substitution, and erosion of monetary sovereignty.”
Blockchain tokenization has been pushed by Wall Street leaders such as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who is among those seeking to tokenize everything from stocks and bonds to money market funds and real estate.
The biggest RWA tokenization platform by total value locked is Securitize — the tokenization platform behind the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund — at $3.38 billion, according to CryptoDep, citing data from April 1.
Tether Gold and Ondo Finance are close behind at $3.35 billion and $3.21 billion, respectively.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d517f-6e2c-7111-895c-3a4043e2564d.jpg\")
The New York Stock Exchange’s parent, Intercontinental Exchange, is also taking action, announcing in January that it would launch a tokenization platform for 24/7 trading and instant settlement of stocks and exchange-traded funds with a blockchain post-trade system.
Related: Liquidity, not novelty, determines tokenization’s value
However, the IMF said legal challenges present another obstacle, stating that without legal clarity over ownership records and settlement finality, tokenized markets risk being “fragmented and peripheral.”
The crypto industry has been developing solutions to address this problem, such as the Ethereum ecosystem’s ERC-3643 permissioned token standard, which ensures that only certain investors have access to tokenized products.
Coinbase Asset Management launched tokenized shares for the Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund on Ethereum layer 2 Base on March 20, with the help of financial services firm Apex Group, which implemented the ERC-3643 standard to ensure that token holder identity and eligibility were checked for compliance.
Magazine: Big Questions: Can Bitcoin save you from the dreaded Cantillon Effect?
", "description": "The IMF said the “net effect of tokenization on financial stability is uncertain,” and that while it can remove friction in finance, it creates other risks.", "published": "2026-04-03T05:13:42+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "blockchain" }, { "slug": "wall-street" }, { "slug": "imf" }, { "slug": "rwa" }, { "slug": "tokenization" }, { "slug": "rwa-tokenization" } ], "slug": "imf-tokenization-improves-finance-but-introduces-other-risks", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258962" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Stablecoins flip automated clearing house volume in February", "leadText": "Stablecoin monthly transaction volume hit $7.2 trillion in February, surpassing the $6.8 trillion processed by the Automated Clearing House network.", "author": { "slug": "brian-quarmby" }, "bodyText": "Stablecoin transaction volume surpassed the US Automated Clearing House network for the first time in February, a significant milestone for an asset class that has existed for less than 12 years.
According to data from blockchain analytics platform Artemis, the total 30-day adjusted rolling stablecoin volume hit $7.2 trillion in February, beating the Automated Clearing House network at $6.8 trillion.
The data is based on 30-day rolling adjusted volume of stablecoin transactions in US dollars, excluding MEV activity and intra-centralized exchange transactions, comparing this to the daily average volume of other financial systems.
\"Stablecoins are quietly becoming the foundational infrastructure for global payments: no banks, no weekends, no borders,\" said analyst Alex Obchakevich in an X post on Friday.
Surpassing the ACH is significant, given that the network functions as the backbone of the US payments system. Data from Nacha, one of the primary forces governing the ACH, indicates that the ACH network processes about 93% of salary payments in the US.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5175-f3bc-7708-b070-e428a62fcfd2.png\")
The data also shows that stablecoin market volumes have consistently grown over the past few years relative to the other major financial systems, such as Visa and PayPal.
Artemis data for March shows that stablecoin volume continued to hit new highs, notching $7.5 trillion for the month and matching the ACH over that 30-day period.
Meanwhile, in the first quarter of 2026, total stablecoin supply hit $315 billion, increasing by $8 billion from the first quarter of 2025, according to data from CEX.IO.
Stablecoins also accounted for 75% of total crypto trading volume in the quarter, marking the highest levels on record, Cointelegraph previously reported.
Related: US Treasury seeks public input for state-level stablecoin regulations
An important catalyst for stablecoins has been the growing adoption by institutions amid a warming regulatory climate in the US.
Analysts from major traditional finance institutions such as Standard Chartered have tipped the total stablecoin market cap to hit $2 trillion by 2028, which would mark an increase of over 530% from current levels.
In a post on Tuesday, Frank Chapparo, the content head at trading firm GSR, argued that banks or fintech firms are \"toast\" if they ignore the explosive growth of the sector.
\"The signals are everywhere,” he said, pointing to the total supply growing from less than $30 billion in 2020 to over $300 billion since then. Chapparo highlighted the GENIUS Act as a key piece of regulation that has unlocked institutional adoption.
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", "description": "Monthly stablecoin volume surpassed the US Automated Clearing House network in February, showing growing adoption of stablecoins globally. ", "published": "2026-04-03T05:08:43+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "transactions" }, { "slug": "payments" }, { "slug": "stablecoin" }, { "slug": "data" }, { "slug": "industry" } ], "slug": "stablecoins-flip-ach-monthly-volume-in-february", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258957" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Circle to launch cirBTC wrapped Bitcoin, challenging BitGo and Coinbase", "leadText": "Circle, known for issuing stablecoins including USDC and EURC, is expanding into the Bitcoin space, targeting institutional users.", "author": { "slug": "martin-young" }, "bodyText": "Stablecoin issuer Circle said it plans to launch its own version of a wrapped Bitcoin, which would put it against incumbents Coinbase and BitGo as it targets institutional users.
The asset, called cirBTC and announced on Thursday, is set to launch on Ethereum, backed 1:1 by bitcoin (BTC) and aimed at over-the-counter desks, market makers and lending protocols.
Circle said the asset is designed to provide institutions with a “highly secure and neutral version of wrapped BTC.”
Financial institutions, which have become significant buyers of Bitcoin, have been actively exploring decentralized finance. Wrapped versions of Bitcoin would allow the asset to be used on other chains, such as Ethereum, giving them access to DeFi.
In addition to Ethereum, the new asset will also launch on Circle’s layer-1 blockchain Arc and its Circle Mint platform, said Circle.
Cointelegraph contacted Circle for further details, but did not receive an immediate response.
Circle’s new wrapped Bitcoin joins a market currently led by BitGo’s Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) and Coinbase Wrapped Bitcoin (cbBTC).
Coinbase’s cbBTC was launched in September 2024 and has a current market capitalization of $5.9 billion and a current supply of 88,800 tokens.
BitGo’s wBTC is the dominant wrapped Bitcoin token, with a market capitalization of about $8 billion and 119,157 tokens in circulation. However, that figure is roughly half its November 2021 peak, when Bitcoin hit its cycle all-time high.
Related: WBTC expands to Hedera as Bitcoin liquidity flows into new DeFi rails
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5158-84e0-7314-bee0-58c637750fb3.jpg\")
Several crypto exchanges have launched variations of wrapped Bitcoin, including Kraken Wrapped BTC (KBTC), Gate Wrapped BTC (GTBTC), Binance Wrapped BTC (BBTC), Huobi BTC (HBTC) and OKX Wrapped BTC (XBTC), but their market caps are a fraction of the two leaders.
The total combined supply of wBTC and cbBTC stands at roughly 208,000 BTC, according to CoinGecko.
Magazine: Your guide to surviving this mini-crypto winter
", "description": "Circle announced cirBTC, a new wrapped bitcoin token backed 1:1 by BTC and built for institutional markets, including OTC desks and lending protocols.", "published": "2026-04-03T04:45:59+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "coinbase" }, { "slug": "circle" }, { "slug": "wrapped-btc" }, { "slug": "industry" } ], "slug": "circle-launch-cirbtc-wrapped-bitcoin-token-targeting-institutional-markets", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258952" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Bitcoin miner Riot sold 3,778 BTC during Q1 amid broader market pressure", "leadText": "Arkham also flagged a 500 Bitcoin outflow from Riot on Thursday, while MARA Holdings, Genius Group and Nakamoto Holdings sold a combined 15,501 Bitcoin in the last week.", "author": { "slug": "stephen-katte" }, "bodyText": "Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms sold 3,778 Bitcoin in the first quarter, adding to a recent wave of sales by crypto firms amid tough market conditions.
The Bitcoin (BTC) was sold at an average price of $76,626, netting Riot $289.5 million, according to the miner’s operational update released on Thursday. Bitcoin was trading at $66,867 as of Friday.
The miner produced 1,473 Bitcoin for the quarter and had 15,680 coins on its books at the end of Q1. Blockchain intelligence platform Arkham also flagged a 500 Bitcoin outflow from a wallet it attributed to Riot Platforms on Thursday.
It adds to a number of crypto miners and firms that have sold Bitcoin in recent months. In the last week, companies including MARA Holdings, Genius Group and Nakamoto Holdings revealed they had sold a combined 15,501 Bitcoin, with the lion’s share coming from MARA.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d513d-7fb1-7c57-99f0-7e4e0a32c7f4.png\")
Kadan Stadelmann, a blockchain developer, investor and co-founder of AI company Compance, said miners are selling due to rising energy costs, which have worsened because of the war in the Middle East.
“Miners are selling off Bitcoin due to increasing energy costs, highlighted by the ongoing oil price shock, which represents one of the main costs of mining Bitcoin. As energy costs rise, the miners are forced to sell off their Bitcoin in an attempt to cover their operational costs.”
The Middle East conflict, which escalated in February, has driven oil prices higher while pushing cryptocurrencies and broader markets lower.
Stadelmann said that less efficient miners are going offline because of mounting costs and predicted further capitulation, leaving larger operators to pick up the slack.
“This leads to a fall in hashrate and difficulty in Bitcoin mining. This makes it easier and more profitable to mine Bitcoins for those miners who remain online,” he told Cointelegraph.
The Bitcoin mining difficulty dropped on March 20 from around 145 trillion to 133 trillion, while the hash rate has also dropped since the start of the month from 1,160 exahash to around 990 exahash as of Friday, according to CoinWarz.
Related: Bitfarms loss widened to $285M as Bitcoin fell, but shares jump anyway
However, Stadelmann also said a potential drop in energy prices and an increase in Bitcoin's price could see less efficient miners return.
“Hashrate and difficulty could increase if efficient miners expand their operations as a result of the friendlier mining environment, possibly through investments in hardware or acquisitions of other miners. Alternatively, energy prices could decline, leading to the return of less efficient miners,” he added.
Magazine: Bitcoin may take 7 years to upgrade to post-quantum — BIP-360 co-author
", "description": "Riot Platforms sold 3,778 Bitcoin in Q1 2026, netting $289.5 million, as miners face rising energy costs and other pressures caused by difficult conditions.", "published": "2026-04-03T04:19:07+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "bitcoin" }, { "slug": "cryptocurrencies" }, { "slug": "business" }, { "slug": "bitcoin-mining" } ], "slug": "riot-sells-3778-bitcoin-miners-shift-strategy", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258947" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Big Tech firms back new x402 Foundation to advance agentic AI adoption", "leadText": "The x402 protocol won't be owned by a single entity, with the Linux Foundation serving as the agentic AI protocol’s “neutral, non-profit home,” Coinbase said.", "author": { "slug": "brayden-lindrea" }, "bodyText": "Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services are among the Big Tech firms supporting the newly launched x402 Foundation, established to govern and standardize the x402 protocol for agentic AI payments on crypto and fiat rails.
The x402 Foundation was launched on Thursday by the open-source software development non-profit Linux Foundation with the help of Coinbase, the creators of the x402 protocol.
Other companies expressing “initial intent and support” of the x402 Foundation include American Express, Mastercard, Visa, Cloudflare, Shopify, Stripe, Circle, Base, Polygon Labs, Solana Foundation, Thirdweb and KakaoPay.
\"The internet was built on open protocols,\" Jim Zemlin, CEO of the Linux Foundation, said on Thursday, as he explained why the x402 protocol should adopt an open-source structure.
Launching the x402 protocol under the Linux Foundation gives it a “neutral, nonprofit home,” said Coinbase. It could help attract more support from tech firms and developers than if it were launched under a company banner.
The Linux Foundation is considered one of the largest and most influential open-source software nonprofits in the world.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d50ec-b6ca-738d-837c-596b13ea3e84.png\")
The move comes amid a broad industry belief that AI agents could become the dominant users of blockchain payments in the coming years.
“There will be more AI agents transacting online than humans very soon,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said, echoing comments from Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire in January that “literally billions of AI agents” will be transacting onchain in three to five years.
Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao also said in January that crypto is the “native currency for AI agents,” which will handle everything from buying tickets to paying bills without credit cards.
Related: How AI agents can reshape arbitrage in prediction markets
x402 is an open payment standard that enables AI agents and web services to autonomously pay for API access, data and digital services.
Transaction activity for the x402 protocol peaked in November last year but quieted down in 2026, Dune Analytics data shows.
A peak of 13.7 million transactions was observed between the week of Nov. 4-10, followed by another 13.66 million transactions the following week.
However, transaction activity has fallen sharply since then, with weekly transactions falling between 29,000 and 1.1 million.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d50ec-b97c-74ed-a54a-02725538cb6d.png\")
Magazine: AI agents will kill the web as we know it: Animoca’s Yat Siu
", "description": "Several Big Tech firms have been named as founding members of the x402 Foundation that will govern the Coinbase-built x402 protocol for AI agent payments.", "published": "2026-04-03T02:26:34+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "coinbase" }, { "slug": "google" }, { "slug": "linux" }, { "slug": "amazon" }, { "slug": "business" }, { "slug": "circle" }, { "slug": "payments" }, { "slug": "microsoft" }, { "slug": "ai" }, { "slug": "industry" } ], "slug": "big-tech-companies-join-x402-protocol-agentic-ai", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258942" }, { "category": { "slug": "markets" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "New Bitcoin price lows on the table until $76K becomes support", "leadText": "Bitcoin data shows a series of bearish trading patterns that could usher in new price lows if the key support at $60,000 fails to hold. Here’s why bulls need a rally to $76,000.", "author": { "slug": "antonio-oliveira" }, "bodyText": "Bitcoin’s (BTC) range-bound trading within the $60,000 to $73,000 range is impressive, especially when considering the macroeconomic backdrop of Brent crude oil rising to levels not seen since 2008, a hot war between the US, Israel and Iran, and a volatile stock market where the S&P 500 index trades at a 3.95% year-to-date loss.
Despite these intensifying headwinds, Bitcoin buyers have shown a steady appetite for buying the price drops to $60,000, and while the level currently holds as support, the risk of lower prices is not zero.
Bitcoin’s 1-day chart shows a bearish continuation pattern, with one pattern confirmed on Jan. 20 as BTC price entered a correction to $60,014, and a second bear flag currently in play. Every price rally to the flag’s overhead trendline has been rebuffed since Feb. 8, and technical analysis stresses the importance of a rally and multi-day candle close above $76,000 to negate the pattern.
Ideally, a rally to $76,000 would hold through a 2- to 3-day consecutive-candle close, followed by a retest of the trendline at $75,000 to confirm a support-resistance flip, where a former resistance level is now confirmed as support.
Analysis by chartered market technician Aksel Kibar predicts a potential price drop to $52,500. Referencing analysis from March 18, Kibar said that a,
“Breakdown of the lower boundary will be the signal for a possible move toward $52,500.”
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d500a-ae94-736a-bab1-400a687b632a.png\")
Related: Bitcoin traders forecast short-term downside even as BTC price chases $68K
Data from Velo highlights the relatively flat market demand across Bitcoin’s spot and futures markets. Although traders appear to view instances where BTC’s funding rate turns negative as a buying opportunity, their confidence is largely absent during rallies into the bear flag’s trendline resistance.
Evidence of this is seen in Bitcoin’s aggregated open interest remaining pinned below $20 billion, a level not seen since Feb. 2 when BTC traded near $79,000.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d500a-b30f-7eae-b151-ff32a635157c.png\")
Regarding Kibar’s $52,500 price prediction and its alignment with Bitcoin’s futures markets, Hyblock liquidation heatmap data shows a large number of leveraged long positions at risk of liquidation if BTC falls into the $63,000 to $65,000 range.
Below this is a liquidity gap, and the next block of open margin long positions starts in the $57,500 to $56,000 range.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d500a-b705-7c63-92ef-57b6c491fe85.png\")
The current price action essentially reflects a market that trades sideways and consolidates as traders search for capital flow or narrative-related factors that would push them into larger directional bets.
Until such a catalyst emerges, it’s likely that Bitcoin will continue to trade within its $10,000 range, with $60,000 as the lowest key support and $70,000 as the most challenging level of resistance.
Stablecoins were a rare bright spot in an otherwise subdued crypto market in the first quarter, with supply growth and transaction activity pointing to sustained demand even as broader market conditions weakened.
Total stablecoin supply increased by roughly $8 billion to a record $315 billion in Q1, according to data from CEX.IO. Although this marked the slowest pace of expansion since Q4 of 2023, it still represented growth during a period when the wider crypto market contracted.
The data suggests investors rotated into stablecoins as a defensive strategy, boosting their share of overall market activity. Stablecoins accounted for 75% of total crypto trading volume during the quarter — the highest level on record.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4fe2-d9ad-788a-8e17-db998b13ea92.png\")
At the same time, total stablecoin transaction volume topped $28 trillion, underscoring their growing role as the primary liquidity layer of the digital asset market. The figure extends a multi-year surge in activity, with stablecoin volumes in recent years exceeding those of major payment networks like Visa and Mastercard combined.
However, data on underlying activity painted a more nuanced picture.
Retail-sized transfers — typically associated with individual users — declined by 16% in the first quarter, the steepest drop on record. In contrast, automated activity surged, with bots accounting for approximately 76% of all stablecoin transaction volume.
The shift toward bot-driven flows suggests that a growing share of stablecoin usage is tied to algorithmic trading, arbitrage and liquidity provisioning, rather than retail demand. While elevated automation can reflect more sophisticated or institutional participation, it may also signal weaker organic demand during bearish market conditions.
Related: Circle shares surge as Bernstein sees upside from stablecoin adoption
One of the CEX.IO report’s key takeaways was a widening divergence between major stablecoin issuers. The supply of Circle’s USDC (USDC) grew by roughly $2 billion in the first quarter, while Tether’s USDt (USDT) declined by about $3 billion, marking the first notable split between the two since Q2 of 2022 amid the bear market.
The trend aligns with earlier Cointelegraph reporting, which highlighted a surge in USDC transfer activity in February, pointing to increased usage across trading and onchain transactions.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4fe2-dd84-7686-91cb-c44b3950a5e3.png\")
Beyond USDC, much of the growth in stablecoin issuance was driven by yield-bearing products — a segment that has drawn increasing scrutiny in the US. Ongoing discussions around a crypto market structure bill in Congress have placed yield at the center of debate, with traditional banks pushing back against stablecoins that offer interest-like returns.
The market for yield-bearing stablecoins is currently valued at around $3.7 billion, with daily trading volumes exceeding $100 million, according to data from CoinGecko.
Related: Crypto Biz: Stablecoin jitters meet institutional momentum
", "description": "Stablecoin supply reached $315 billion in Q1 as USDC grew and USDT declined, with trading dominance rising and bot-driven activity signaling shifting market dynamics.", "published": "2026-04-02T22:29:12+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "cex-io" }, { "slug": "research" }, { "slug": "circle" }, { "slug": "tether" }, { "slug": "stablecoin" }, { "slug": "industry" } ], "slug": "stablecoin-supply-315b-q1-usdc-rises-usdt-declines", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258932" }, { "category": { "slug": "markets" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Rocky US economy, private credit stress, war impact Bitcoin’s odds for $75K rally", "leadText": "Are Bitcoin’s odds for a rally to $75,000 diminished by a weakening US economy, the war in Iran and multiple institutional BTC holders selling in the open market?", "author": { "slug": "marcel-pechman" }, "bodyText": "Key takeaways:
Private credit risks and weak US jobs market data drive Bitcoin lower, but is there a silver lining?
Institutional Bitcoin ETF outflows and miner sales test BTC's strength, but the Federal Reserve's options for addressing the federal deficit may also favor scarce assets.
Bitcoin (BTC) faced rejection at $69,000 on Wednesday after President Donald Trump's speech failed to guarantee an end to the war in Iran. Oil prices soared following the speech and beyond traders’ war-related worries, tumult in the private credit markets is also taking a toll on investor confidence across multiple markets.
While Bitcoin has successfully defended the $66,000 level throughout the week, traders remain concerned about downside risk over the upcoming weekend, as US and European markets will be closed on Friday for Easter.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5004-c5a1-7aa5-a99f-2a05345de58a.png\")
The threat of additional US-led military action in Iran caused WTI crude oil prices to rally above $110, triggering a move away from risky assets. Traders chose to cut their exposure to Bitcoin and stocks as the US Treasury Department expressed concerns regarding the $2 trillion private credit markets on Wednesday. Domestic and international insurance regulators will be surveyed through early May.
Blue Owl, a $307 billion alternative asset manager, announced \"extraordinary redemption requests\" for two of its private credit funds in shareholder letters issued Thursday. Over 70% of the companies Blue Owl lends to are in the software industry, as reported during a quarterly earnings call. The fund manager capped withdrawal requests at 5%, adding fresh concerns to the credit market.
Adding to the short-term bearish sentiment among traders was a surge in US continuing jobless claims, which rose to 1.84 million for the week ending March 21, up from 1.82 million the week prior. This data is not inherently negative for equities; however, as the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas noted, most layoffs originated from companies \"shifting budgets toward AI investments at the expense of jobs.\"
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5004-ca12-712c-885c-431e21cc70a6.png\")
The odds of economic stimulus initiatives amid weakening economic activity could ultimately support Bitcoin's price in the medium term. The US federal deficit is expected to reach a massive $1.9 trillion in 2026, leaving little room to maneuver other than injecting liquidity, which tends to benefit scarce assets.
An improvement in the risk perception of Bitcoin will be decisive for a potential rally above $75,000. There has been a considerable negative impact from net outflows from US-listed spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs), the liquidation of positions held by companies that previously focused on building corporate reserves, and the unwinding by publicly listed miners.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d5004-cf88-7a1f-8a4e-954f164eae97.png\")
US-listed Bitcoin ETFs have seen $450 million in net outflows since March 24, which serves as a proxy for weak institutional demand. Traders fear further selling pressure because the industry holds $88 billion in Bitcoin under management, with BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT US) leading at $53.9 billion. However, these outflows should slow if Bitcoin continues to show strength near $66,000.
Related: Bitcoin hits weekly low on oil fears as analyst teases $10K BTC price target
MARA Holdings (MARA US) announced the sale of 15,133 BTC in March at a price far below the company’s estimated cost basis. Meanwhile, Riot Platforms (RIOT US) reportedly transferred 500 BTC for sale on Wednesday. Additionally, Nakamoto Holdings (NAKA US) disclosed a sale of 284 BTC, despite having previously announced its intention to continue accumulating the asset.
As long as companies such as Strategy (MSTR US) and Metaplanet (MTPLF US) continue to absorb some of this selling pressure, investors will likely recognize that Bitcoin serves as a safeguard against increasing money supply. Governments will do everything possible to avoid a recession, raising the odds that Bitcoin’s path to $75,000 stays firmly in play despite worsening macroeconomic conditions.
", "description": "Bitcoin miners and spot BTC ETFs have become sellers as the US economy weakens and the war in Iran rages on. Can BTC find a reason to rally?", "published": "2026-04-02T22:24:42+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "bitcoin" }, { "slug": "cryptocurrencies" }, { "slug": "government" }, { "slug": "bitcoin-price" }, { "slug": "markets" }, { "slug": "united-states" }, { "slug": "donald-trump" }, { "slug": "national-debt" }, { "slug": "market-analysis" }, { "slug": "microstrategy" }, { "slug": "bitcoin-etf" } ], "slug": "rocky-us-economy-private-credit-stress-war-impact-bitcoin-s-odds-for-75k-rally", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "Market Update" } ] }, "id": "258922" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Polymarket expands into equities and commodities with Pyth price feeds", "leadText": "The prediction market is introducing price-based contracts tied to stocks and commodities, using Pyth data feeds as the \"resolution source\" to automatically settle outcomes.", "author": { "slug": "nate-kostar" }, "bodyText": "Polymarket has added markets tied to equities, commodities and exchange-traded funds, using price data from blockchain oracle provider Pyth Network as the resolution source to determine outcomes for daily contracts.
The new markets include daily up-or-down and closing price contracts for major equity indexes, commodities such as gold and oil, and a range of US-listed stocks, with outcomes settled automatically based on Pyth’s real-time price feeds. The contracts reset at the end of each trading session.
According to the announcement, the offering includes more than a dozen US-listed stocks, including Tesla, Nvidia and Apple, alongside commodities and equity indices.
![\"United](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4fc9-8f15-789c-acdb-092647faa56f.png\")
By making Pyth the resolution layer for these markets, Polymarket is supplanting manual or exchange-specific references with a standardized data source aggregated from trading firms and market makers.
Zug, Switzerland-based Pyth said it also launched a data interface called Pyth Terminal, where users can track live price feeds and the reference values used to settle markets on Polymarket. Traders can follow a live “price to beat” that updates continuously as markets move.
Polymarket allows users to take positions on the outcomes of real-world events, such as sports, elections, financial markets and weather, with contracts resolving based on whether specific conditions are met.
Last week, Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, said it had completed a $600 million cash investment in Polymarket and plans to acquire up to an additional $40 million in shares from existing holders as part of a broader multibillion-dollar commitment to the platform.
![\"United](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4fe5-230a-7d8c-aea4-4d36f44c79a9.png\")
Related: Polymarket fee expansion boosts revenue amid regulatory pressure
Oracle networks, which bring offchain data such as prices, foreign exchange rates and commodities onto blockchains, are expanding beyond crypto into financial, government and prediction-based applications.
Their role has begun to extend into official data systems, with Chainlink and Pyth Network selected by US government agencies to publish economic data onchain, including GDP and inflation metrics. The announcement sent the PYTH (PYTH) token up more than 70% on the day, lifting its market capitalization past $1 billion.
The announcement comes as oracle providers are being used to power prediction markets and real-world event data, with RedStone integrating data from the CFTC-regulated platform Kalshi across more than 110 blockchains in October.
They are also playing a growing role in connecting crypto platforms to traditional financial markets. In January, Chainlink said it would roll out 24/5 price data for US equities and ETFs to crypto platforms, enabling trading, lending and derivatives tied to tokenized stocks beyond standard market hours.
The following month, Ondo Finance said it had integrated Chainlink as the data provider for tokenized US equities on its Ondo Global Markets platform, where the feeds are used to support lending and collateralization.
Data from DeFiLlama shows a highly concentrated oracle market, with Chainlink accounting for around 64% of total value secured. Other providers, including RedStone and Pyth Network, hold much smaller shares at around 5% each.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4f92-462f-78b9-bddf-5968b8a6af60.png\")
Magazine: AI agents will kill the web as we know it: Animoca’s Yat Siu
", "description": "Polymarket launches markets tied to equities and commodities using Pyth price feeds, as oracle networks expand into financial data, prediction markets and government systems.", "published": "2026-04-02T21:34:05+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "united-kingdom" }, { "slug": "stocks" }, { "slug": "tesla" }, { "slug": "chainlink" }, { "slug": "industry" }, { "slug": "polymarket" }, { "slug": "kalshi" }, { "slug": "prediction-markets" } ], "slug": "polymarket-expands-into-equities-and-commodities-with-pyth-price-feeds", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258917" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "CFTC sues 3 states over prediction market regulatory authority", "leadText": "The Commodity Futures Trading Commission claims it \"first officially recognized\" event contracts in 1992 and that Congress has granted it sole authority over the market.", "author": { "slug": "vince-quill" }, "bodyText": "The Trump administration is suing Illinois, Connecticut, Arizona, and their gaming regulators over the federal government’s right to regulate prediction markets.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the US Department of Justice filed separate lawsuits on Thursday against the three states.
In 2025, those states and their gaming regulators sent cease and desist letters to prediction platforms, including Kalshi and Polymarket, claiming that the event contracts offered by the platforms violated state gambling laws and licensing requirements.
The federal financial regulator’s lawsuit against Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the Illinois Gaming Board argues that the Illinois Gaming Board overstepped its authority by categorizing event contracts as “wagers” or “sports betting” instead of asset swaps.
![\"CFTC,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4fbd-bdb4-7859-ac27-b58e27a7d00f.png\")
In each of the three lawsuits, the CFTC maintains that it has “exclusive jurisdiction” to regulate “Designated Contract Markets (DCMs),” which include prediction platforms, under the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA). The Illinois lawsuit said:
“Illinois’s attempt to shut down federally regulated DCMs intrudes on the exclusive federal scheme Congress designed to oversee national swaps markets. Prompted by the evolution of national financial markets and repeated conflicts with state law.”
“Unless restrained and enjoined by the court, defendants are likely to continue their attempts to subvert federal law and the exclusive jurisdiction to regulate event contract swaps conferred on the CFTC by Congress,” the lawsuit filing said.
The CFTC lawsuit comes amid increased legal scrutiny of prediction markets by US lawmakers and regulators, as 11 states pursue legal action against prediction market platforms.
Related: CFTC’s top enforcer puts prediction market insider traders on notice
“These states' aggressive and overzealous attempts to overstep the CFTC have led to market uncertainty and risks destabilizing effects for market participants and our registrants,” CFTC Chairman Mike Selig said after the lawsuits were filed.
![\"CFTC,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4fc1-6482-7076-bcef-b752f9df643d.png\")
State regulators in Arizona, Nevada, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Montana, Ohio, Connecticut, Tennessee, New York and Massachusetts have taken legal action against prediction markets.
At the same time, Congressional lawmakers are attempting to push through legislative proposals that would ban sports-related event contracts and prevent political insiders from participating in prediction markets tied to war.
Magazine: IronClaw rivals OpenClaw, Olas launches bots for Polymarket — AI Eye
", "description": "The CFTC has filed three lawsuits against US states that have taken legal action against prediction markets and claimed exclusive authority over event contracts.", "published": "2026-04-02T21:21:20+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "cftc" }, { "slug": "arizona" }, { "slug": "us-government" }, { "slug": "united-states" }, { "slug": "regulation" }, { "slug": "prediction-markets" } ], "slug": "cftc-sues-3-states-prediction-market-regulation", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258912" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "X mulls new rules for first-time crypto posts amid tortoise scam", "leadText": "An executive said the social media platform could lock accounts mentioning crypto for the first time and require verification after a scammer faked reports of a tortoise's death.", "author": { "slug": "turner-wright" }, "bodyText": "Social media platform X is considering implementing new rules for first-time user posts about crypto in an effort to crack down on scammers using phishing attacks to gain access to accounts.
Nikita Bier, the head of product at the platform formerly known as Twitter, made the announcement on Wednesday amid reports that a scammer pretending to be a veterinarian previously responsible for the health of a 193-year-old tortoise named “Jonathan” conned social media users into buying crypto before the truth was revealed.
Bier said that X could auto-lock accounts mentioning crypto for the first time and require them to go through verification. “This should kill 99% of the incentive, especially since Google isn’t doing shit to stop the phishing emails,” read his post.
A scammer pretending to be the veterinarian responsible for Jonathan reportedly posted a link to a Solana-based memecoin before the BBC and other news outlets revealed the truth on Thursday.
Data from CoinMarketCap showed the price of the Solana-based memecoin, called JONATHAN, surged by more than 6,000% amid the social media posts before sharply dropping. At the time of publication, the token was priced at $0.00007043.
Related: Alleged Huione money-laundering boss extradited to China
![\"Twitter,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4ffa-56b5-764f-b810-c6b2801fe123.png\")
According to the BBC report, a scammer on the social media platform X, pretended to be veterinarian Joe Hollins, posting that the tortoise had died on the British territory of Saint Helena, an island in the Atlantic. The account reportedly linked to a Solana blockchain memecoin based on Jonathan’s death.
“Jonathan the tortoise is very much alive,” said the real Hollins in a statement to The Guardian. “I believe on X the person purporting to be me is asking for crypto donations, so it’s not even an April fool joke. It’s a con.”
Many scammers have used anonymous or pseudonymous accounts on social media platforms to convince users to send crypto based on false pretenses. Although impersonating an animal like Jonathan is unusual, people have created unauthorized memecoins based on Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, US President Donald Trump, and many other public figures.
![\"Twitter,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4f85-587c-7d03-b000-7568b57c6d61.png\")
Many hackers have used X accounts or gained access to legitimate accounts to post scams like fake memecoins or claims to “double your money.”
Magazine: Your guide to surviving this mini-crypto winter
", "description": "An X executive said the platform could restrict first-time crypto posts after it was revealed that an account linked to a Solana blockchain memecoin faked the death of the world's oldest tortoise.", "published": "2026-04-02T21:15:45+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "twitter" }, { "slug": "cryptocurrencies" }, { "slug": "united-kingdom" }, { "slug": "scams" }, { "slug": "industry" } ], "slug": "crypto-scam-fake-death-tortoise", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258907" }, { "category": { "slug": "market-analysis" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Ether at risk of new 2026 lows if bulls fail to turn $2.4K into support", "leadText": "Fresh lows below $1,736 could be in store for Ether price if bulls fail to hold the altcoin’s price above an important ascending trendline.", "author": { "slug": "biraajmaan-tamuly" }, "bodyText": "Ether (ETH) price may be at risk of a correction to new year-to-date lows, especially if the bulls fail to secure daily candle closes above the $2,150 to $2,400 range.
Ether’s price action continues to be driven by US and global macroeconomic events, along with investors’ appetite for risk assets during the US and Israel-Iran war. As data shows more than $1 billion in futures-driven sell pressure, the chance of Ether falling below $1,800 rises.
Repeat rejections near $2,150 continue to cap Ether rallies, and the level has acted as a strong resistance seven times over the past two months. The trend and its resistance dominate the price action, despite the pattern of higher-high and higher-low candles, which can be seen on the daily chart.
![\"Cryptocurrencies,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4f03-7ccd-7478-a7f0-a30cc6e988ac.png\")
A break below the ascending trendline may shift traders’ focus to $1,900, where liquidity sits near the equal lows formed during the first week of March. Losing that level introduces a bearish break of structure, exposing the external liquidity pockets to Ether’s yearly low at $1,736.
The short positioning has not increased significantly despite the recent decline. The liquidation heatmap shows an imbalance within a 10% range ($1,845–$2,255) from the current price, with approximately $2.4 billion in long liquidations clustered near the lower bound ($1,845) and $1.7 billion in short liquidations near the upper bound ($2,255).
![\"Cryptocurrencies,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4f04-31a4-762f-a14e-15e6d3b11aec.png\")
This skew indicates that downside liquidity is larger, but the short positioning still isn’t overcrowded, even as the price continues to weaken.
The absence of large short buildup points to a passive positioning stance rather than conviction-driven selling. The price continues to compress under resistance, with buyers unable to reclaim control above the key threshold of $2,150.
Related: Ethereum bulls must hold $2K: Volatility metric hints at ‘strong’ move next
A surge in ETH futures selling followed comments by US President Donald Trump, which escalated tensions with Iran rather than calming markets. Trump signaled that military action will continue until late April and warned of potential strikes on Iran’s power plants.
Following the development, crypto analyst Darkfost noted that Ether futures sell volume on Binance increased by $1 billion within an hour.
![\"Cryptocurrencies,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4f16-1fac-741d-be38-c6efd109b70b.jpg\")
Despite the surge in selling, ETH continues to trade just below the $2,150 resistance level. A sustained move above $2,150 would open the way toward $2,400, where resistance is relatively thin.
If the price clears $2,400, the next expansion zone sits near $2,800, where little trading activity has occurred over the past six months.
![\"Cryptocurrencies,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4f16-b6a5-7b31-b679-ae73fc95ccd9.png\")
For now, ETH remains range-bound, capped by repeated resistance near $2,150, with $1,900 acting as the nearest liquidity pivot, which may extend the bearish breakdown.
Related: Ethereum’s EEZ and the attempt to rebuild one Ethereum
", "description": "Stiff resistance at $2,150 and eroding support near $1,950 threaten to send Ether price to new year-to-date lows if traders lose hold of the key support level.", "published": "2026-04-02T19:25:33+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "cryptocurrencies" }, { "slug": "altcoin" }, { "slug": "ethereum" }, { "slug": "bitcoin-price" }, { "slug": "markets" }, { "slug": "cryptocurrency-exchange" }, { "slug": "derivatives" }, { "slug": "market-analysis" } ], "slug": "ether-at-risk-of-new-2026-lows-if-bulls-fail-to-turn-dollar2-4k-into-support", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "Altcoin Watch" } ] }, "id": "258902" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "SoFi expands into institutional finance with integrated crypto services", "leadText": "The new platform enables companies to hold funds, move money and settle transactions in fiat or crypto within a single regulated system.", "author": { "slug": "nate-kostar" }, "bodyText": "Digital banking platform SoFi Technologies has launched Big Business Banking, a platform that allows companies to manage fiat and crypto transactions within a single regulated system.
According to Thursday’s announcement, the offering enables companies to hold deposits, move funds and settle transactions around the clock using either traditional currencies or digital assets, consolidating functions that have typically been split across banks, custodians and crypto service providers.
It also introduces support for issuing and redeeming the company’s stablecoin, SoFiUSD, allowing businesses to convert between fiat and onchain assets while keeping reserves within a regulated banking environment.
The rollout includes participation from companies such as Cumberland, BitGo, Bullish, B2C2, Fireblocks, Wintermute, Jupiter, Galaxy, Mesh Payments and Mastercard, reflecting early demand from trading, payments and infrastructure providers.
SoFi said the system is expected to connect with blockchain networks, including Solana, to support onchain settlement.
The move comes as the bank has been pushing deeper into digital assets. In June, SoFi resumed crypto trading, enabling users to buy, sell and hold digital assets, and expanded blockchain-based remittance services to more than 30 countries.
In December, it launched SoFiUSD, a fully reserved dollar-backed stablecoin issued by its banking subsidiary, redeemable on demand and initially deployed on Ethereum.
Related: Standard Chartered says faster stablecoin turnover could curb demand
While SoFi is expanding from the banking side, crypto-native companies are building similar infrastructure to integrate digital assets into institutional systems.
In March, crypto infrastructure platform BitGo launched a financing platform that enables institutions to borrow and lend against liquid, staked and locked assets within a single custody account.
In January, Fireblocks acquired crypto accounting platform TRES for $130 million, adding tax and compliance capabilities as institutions seek audit-ready reporting for digital asset operations.
![\"Coinbase,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4f04-0136-7535-839d-4664e5f40de9.png\")
This week, Ripple added digital asset capabilities to its treasury platform, enabling companies to manage crypto and fiat balances in one system.
Beyond expanding services for institutional clients, several platforms are also pursuing US banking licenses. On Wednesday, crypto exchange EDX Markets applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish a national trust bank, aiming to separate custody and settlement from trading through a non-depository entity called EDX Trust.
Earlier this month, Zerohash applied for a national trust bank charter to expand its stablecoin and custody services, joining applicants including Coinbase, Laser Digital and Payoneer as companies seek regulatory approval to offer integrated crypto financial services.
Magazine: AI agents will kill the web as we know it: Animoca’s Yat Siu
", "description": "SoFi launches Big Business Banking, enabling companies to manage fiat and crypto within a single regulated system as institutions move toward integrated digital asset infrastructure.", "published": "2026-04-02T17:56:28+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "coinbase" }, { "slug": "banks" }, { "slug": "ripple" }, { "slug": "bitgo" }, { "slug": "united-states" }, { "slug": "sofi" }, { "slug": "industry" } ], "slug": "sofi-institutional-banking-platform-crypto-services", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258897" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Bitcoin miner Soluna acquires $53M wind farm to power AI facility", "leadText": "Soluna expanded into artificial intelligence in 2024 to shore up declining revenues from its crypto mining business, mirroring an industry-wide shift toward AI workloads.", "author": { "slug": "vince-quill" }, "bodyText": "Soluna Holdings, a publicly traded Bitcoin (BTC) mining and AI infrastructure company focused on renewable energy, announced on Thursday that it closed a $53 million deal to acquire a wind farm to power its upcoming Project Dorothy 3 AI data center campus.
The Briscoe Wind Farm, located in Briscoe County, Texas, has a potential capacity of up to 300 megawatts (MW), according to the company's announcement.
The company forecasts that the facility will generate annualized revenue between $20 million and $24.4 million.
Shares of Soluna are up by about 7.6% following the news, and are trading at about $0.76 at the time of writing.
![\"Mining,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4efa-aae7-7b78-9bd4-16aea2faba0e.png\")
Soluna expanded into AI data center infrastructure in February 2024, amid an industry-wide pivot toward AI and high-performance computing infrastructure to shore up declining revenues from the crypto mining business.
Related: AI data center gold rush sparks debate over impact on Bitcoin mining
The Bitcoin mining industry faces several economic headwinds, including declining block rewards, rising energy costs and compressing profit margins, with many companies operating near or below breakeven levels.
Up to 20% of mining companies aren’t profitable, according to a March 2026 report from asset manager CoinShares.
The average cost to mine a single Bitcoin rose to nearly $80,000 in the fourth quarter of 2025, CoinShares said. Bitcoin is currently trading well below that level.
![\"Mining,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4efc-8ed3-7670-a42d-3fc945cb9b78.png\")
“Q4 2025 marked the most challenging quarter for Bitcoin miners since the April 2024 halving,” the report said.
The October 2025 market crash, which caused Bitcoin to plummet from an all-time high around the $125,000 level to a low of about $60,000, and rising network hashrate have placed even more pressure on the industry, CoinShares said.
![\"Mining,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4efe-99fb-73c1-a420-5dcf59c12120.png\")
Bitcoin mining companies sold over 15,000 BTC between October and early March to cover operating expenses, and the pace of selling has continued in recent weeks.
Several Bitcoin mining companies, including The Pheonix Group and Sangha Renewables, have adopted renewable energy solutions to power their operations and remain competitive amid a challenging business environment.
Canaan, a mining hardware manufacturer and mining company, partnered with Soluna in September to deploy a wind-powered BTC mining facility at the Briscoe, Texas site.
Related: AI may already use more power than Bitcoin — and it threatens Bitcoin mining
", "description": "Soluna, a company that provides energy solutions and infrastructure for crypto mining and AI data centers, has purchased another green energy site.", "published": "2026-04-02T17:37:49+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "mining" }, { "slug": "bitcoin-mining" }, { "slug": "energy" }, { "slug": "data-center" }, { "slug": "renewable-energy" }, { "slug": "ai-and-hi-tech" } ], "slug": "bitcoin-miner-soluna-acquires-53m-wind-farm-to-power-ai-facility", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258892" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Coinbase receives conditional approval for US trust charter", "leadText": "Chief legal officer Paul Grewal announced the approval on Thursday, thanking OCC head Jonathan Gould, who took office less than a year ago.", "author": { "slug": "turner-wright" }, "bodyText": "The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has approved cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase’s application for a national bank trust charter after six months of consideration.
In a Thursday X post, Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal said the company received conditional approval for the OCC application, following December approvals for Ripple Labs, BitGo, Circle, Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos.
Although the company said in October it had “no intention of becoming a bank\" if approved, the move by US regulators marks one of the most significant forays into bridging crypto and traditional finance.
![\"Coinbase,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4ee7-6a00-7a62-98d5-d2aac81240ab.png\")
“Coinbase is not becoming a commercial bank,” said vice president of institutional product Greg Tusar in a Thursday blog post. “We will not be taking retail deposits. We will not be engaging in fractional reserve banking. This charter is about bringing federal regulatory uniformity to the custody and market infrastructure business we have been building for years.”
Tusar said that the company would continue to operate under the Department of Financial Services in New York, where it holds a BitLicense and a state charter as a limited-purpose trust company.
The OCC approval, coupled with Coinbase’s state-level efforts, came as the company is engaged in a debate on issues including stablecoin yield, which are stalling a digital asset market structure bill in Congress.
CEO Brian Armstrong said in January that the exchange could not support the legislation as written. Lawmakers on the Senate Banking Committee later postponed a markup, which is necessary before a potential floor vote on the bill.
Related: Coinbase exec says Senate CLARITY compromise is close, but no markup date set
At the time of publication, the OCC website showed no change to Coinbase’s application, which it marked as received by the banking regulator. Cointelegraph reached out to the exchange for comment but had not received a response by publication.
The crypto platform rolled out prediction market bets for US-based users in January as part of a partnership with Kalshi.
In lawsuits filed preemptively against state gaming authorities in Connecticut, Illinois and Michigan, Coinbase argued that the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as a federal regulator, had the authority to oversee prediction markets. Many of the cases were ongoing as of Thursday.
Magazine: AI agents will kill the web as we know it: Animoca’s Yat Siu
", "description": "Coinbase announced a landmark approval from the US OCC for a national trust charter, following in the footsteps of Ripple and other crypto companies.", "published": "2026-04-02T17:01:49+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "coinbase" }, { "slug": "banks" }, { "slug": "united-states" }, { "slug": "cryptocurrency-exchange" }, { "slug": "regulation" } ], "slug": "coinbase-conditional-approval-national-trust-charter-occ", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258882" }, { "category": { "slug": "market-analysis" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Bitcoin holders face $600B in unrealized losses as BTC price slips to $66K", "leadText": "About 44% of Bitcoin's circulating supply trades underwater at $66,000 with weak spot demand weighing on market sentiment.", "author": { "slug": "nancy-lubale" }, "bodyText": "Bitcoin (BTC) traded at $66,450 on Thursday, a 47% drawdown from its all-time high of $126,000 reached in October 2025. As a result, many BTC holders are sitting on significant unrealized losses, underscoring the risks still facing Bitcoin investors at current levels.
Key takeaways:
Bitcoin’s 47% drawdown from its $126,000 all-time high has left holders with nearly $600 billion in unrealized losses.
Apparent demand and buying from US investors remain in deep contraction, suggesting broader market distribution.
BTC/USD trades 24% below its yearly open of $87,500 after it closed 2025 in the red. The prolonged weakness has pushed a significant portion of its supply underwater.
As Bitcoin trades at $66,450 on Thursday, roughly 8.8 million BTC are held at a loss, representing $598.7 billion in unrealized losses, or more than 44% of the circulating supply, according to data from Glassnode.
Related: Bitcoin risks new lows as US dollar targets highest level since April 2025
The magnitude of this figure implies a “structural resemblance to conditions observed in Q2 2022,” Glassnode said in its latest Week On-chain newsletter.
Glassnode explained that the 2022 bear market provides a precedent when roughly 3 million BTC needed to be redistributed before the market could recover.
“Historically, resolving a supply overhang of this scale has required a meaningful redistribution of coins from loss-realizing holders to new buyers at lower prices.”
![\"Cryptocurrencies,](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e85-9189-7846-8ae6-f1db8d95c818.jpeg\")
This mounting paper loss has eroded conviction, prompting long-term holders (LTH) to capitulate by selling below their cost basis.
LTH realized loss, a metric that measures the aggregate dollar value of Bitcoin sold at a loss by investors who have held BTC for more than 155 days, has risen to $200 million, “confirming active capitulation,” Glassnode said, adding:
“A meaningful cooldown toward levels below $25M per day would represent a more compelling signal of exhaustion in selling pressure, and a prerequisite for the base formation that historically precedes a sustainable bull market transition.”
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e83-4be3-7c6b-abc3-dd0834514d0a.png\")
BTC’s spot price is also below the average cost basis of US spot Bitcoin ETF holders, currently at $83,408, suggesting that these investors are increasingly under strain.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e83-6d09-7ff7-a589-dcba5bf3556f.png\")
The risk-off sentiment is also seen in global Bitcoin investment products, which recorded more than $194 million in net outflows during the week ending March 27.
Bitcoin’s apparent demand has stayed negative since mid-December 2025, as traders and investors continue to be risk-off amid BTC’s price weakness.
Capriole Investment’s Bitcoin Apparent Demand metric shows that the demand for Bitcoin is at -1,623 BTC on Thursday, and that sellers are in control.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e83-85dc-76cf-9d2b-79a85a6fd12d.png\")
The continued contraction in total apparent demand indicates persistent “selling from retail,” CryptoQuant said in its latest Weekly Crypto report, adding:
“The sustained demand contraction, now persisting since late November 2025, confirms that the broader market remains in distribution.”
Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s Coinbase Premium Index, which measures the difference in pricing between the BTC/USD pair on Coinbase and Binance, also remains in negative territory.
“The persistent negative premium indicates that US investors have not yet re-entered the market at scale,” CryptoQuant said, adding:
“This is consistent with the demand contraction seen across on-chain metrics.”
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e83-ada6-7d71-82ae-91e841d97e78.png\")
As Cointelegraph reported, Bitcoin price risks new lows in the short term amid a strengthening US dollar.
Opinion by: João Garcia, DevReal lead at Cartesi.
Decentralized finance presents itself as a transparent alternative to Wall Street. Yet, what it has largely reconstructed is a simplified version of finance, engineered less around market resilience than around the constraints of gas fees. That trade-off, once treated as a technical footnote, is increasingly shaping the limits of what DeFi can become.
So long as computational minimalism remains the overriding priority, financial robustness will remain secondary, and periods of market stress will continue to expose that imbalance.
DeFi has rebuilt the familiar architecture of finance, including exchanges, lending markets, derivatives and stablecoins. However, the way these systems function reveals how tightly they are bound by their execution environments.
Risk parameters tend to remain static, and although collateral thresholds can adjust, they typically do so slowly, through governance processes rather than automatic recalibration. Liquidation engines currently rely on fixed formulas rather than adaptive portfolio models that account for shifting volatility or correlations. What appears as a design preference is often a concession to computational limits.
On Ethereum and similar chains, floating-point arithmetic is absent or emulated, iterative simulations are expensive, and continuously recomputing cross-asset exposure can quickly become impractical. The outcome is that financial logic is compressed into forms that are deterministic and affordable to execute, even if that compression strips away nuance.
This architecture performs adequately in stable conditions, but volatility has a way of testing its edges. During MakerDAO’s “Black Thursday” event in March 2020, vaults were liquidated at effectively zero bids, as auction mechanics struggled under collapsing prices and network congestion.
In later downturns, protocols such as Aave and Compound leaned on mass liquidations triggered by fixed collateral ratios, rather than dynamic portfolio recalculations. When Curve’s pools were destabilized in 2023 following a smart contract exploit, the stress radiated outward into lending protocols that treated LP tokens as static collateral, compounding systemic risk.
In each instance, decentralization itself was not the breaking point. Rather, rigid financial logic operated inside an execution layer that could not continuously recompute risk as conditions deteriorated.
Traditional markets evolved in the opposite direction. Banks and clearinghouses simulate thousands of stress scenarios, recalculating exposure as correlations shift and volatility regimes change. Margin requirements respond dynamically to market conditions, and the response is led by substantial computational infrastructure and mature numerical tooling. Public blockchains, by contrast, were not designed with that degree of iterative financial processing in mind.
Constraining computational complexity reduces certain attack surfaces. Simplicity at the protocol layer, however, does not dissolve complexity in the financial system. It merely pushes it elsewhere.
When risk cannot be modeled and recomputed transparently on-chain, it migrates off-chain into dashboards, analytics teams, discretionary parameter adjustments and emergency governance coordination. The blockchain may remain the settlement layer, but the adaptive intelligence that stabilizes the system increasingly operates outside it. During volatility spikes, protocols often depend on rapid human coordination to adjust parameters, while oracles and large token holders acquire disproportionate influence over outcomes.
The system retains its decentralized base, yet its capacity to respond flexibly depends on actors operating beyond deterministic execution. What appears structurally simple at the smart contract level can conceal a more complex and less transparent operational reality.
DeFi did not converge on simplified finance because static ratios and deterministic curves were proven superior. It converged there because richer computational models were prohibitively expensive to run. As markets deepen, leverage increases, and instruments grow more interdependent, that compromise becomes harder to ignore. Fixed thresholds and blunt liquidation engines, initially safeguards, can begin to function as amplifiers of stress.
The deeper constraint, more than decentralization, is execution design.
If verifiable execution environments begin to approximate general-purpose computing systems, the financial design space expands. Native floating-point assistance, iterative algorithms and access to established numerical libraries would allow models to be expressed directly rather than translated into simplified approximations.
Related: Wall Street will eventually submit to the rules of DeFi
This change would allow lending protocols to incorporate scenario-based stress testing instead of relying primarily on fixed collateral ratios. Margin requirements may also adjust in response to observed volatility rather than governance cadence. It could also see credit systems recompute multivariable risk scores transparently, replacing binary heuristics with more granular assessments.
The aim is not to introduce complexity for its own sake. It is to keep financial intelligence inside the protocol, where it remains visible and enforceable, rather than externalizing it into operational layers that users cannot easily audit. This underscores the broader point that the limitations confronting DeFi are largely architectural choices, not inevitabilities of decentralization.
DeFi now stands at a structural crossroads. One direction preserves gas-optimized minimalism, keeping base-layer execution clean while allowing increasingly sophisticated financial logic to migrate off-chain. That path may maintain clarity at the smart contract level, but it constrains how far decentralized finance can responsibly scale.
The alternative is to treat computation itself as a first-class primitive and to accept more capable execution environments in exchange for systems that can adapt, recompute and stress-test transparently. If complex risk logic cannot live on-chain, DeFi will continue to project simplicity in code while relying on discretion in practice.
Markets will not moderate their complexity to accommodate virtual machine constraints. If decentralized finance intends to operate at a meaningful scale, its computational foundations will have to evolve alongside the financial ambitions built on top of them.
Opinion by: João Garcia, DevReal lead at Cartesi.
Bitcoin (BTC) received a $10,000 price warning as stocks took a fresh hit over oil-supply fears at Thursday’s Wall Street open.
Key points:
$10,000 BTC prices may return as the market struggles to hold ground, says new analysis.
Bitcoin and US stocks take a further beating as markets discount the odds of the Strait of Hormuz returning to “normal.”
Oil spikes to $114 per barrel in a volatile Wall Street open.
Data from TradingView tracked BTC price action as it dipped below $66,000 to reach week-to-date lows.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e92-1b33-75d6-bb7f-b51d6f2f9469.png\")
Bitcoin continued to field warnings from market participants over short-term and long-term price performance.
In his latest analysis, Mike McGlone, senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, even saw $10,000 coming back into play for BTC/USD.
“Before the biggest money pump in history in 2020-21, Bitcoin hovered around $10,000, and it may be reverting,” he wrote in a summary on X.
McGlone argued that $10,000 had particular importance as the point at which Bitcoin futures markets first began trading almost a decade ago.
![\"Bitcoin](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e8c-4bff-7edc-9e23-585a030915e2.png\")
Data from CoinGlass put 24-hour crypto liquidations at over $400 million on Thursday.
![\"Bitcoin](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e8b-af44-75c2-a95c-903946ac2bb9.png\")
US equities came under considerable pressure at the open, with the Nasdaq Composite Index down by more than 2% at the time of writing.
Related: US recession odds near 50%: Can Bitcoin copy 2020 comeback gains?
Gold found cause for a modest rebound after its own comedown earlier, with oil supplies through the Strait of Hormuz in the spotlight. WTI crude spiked to $114 per barrel as the US session began.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e8e-dcdc-7e62-862a-244a541920b7.png\")
Reacting, trading resource The Kobeissi Letter said that US inflation could hit 3.6% if prices sustained for two months.
“This would put US inflation at its highest level since September 2023,” it wrote on X.
Prediction platform Kalshi showed declining odds of oil traffic reverting to “normal” levels this year.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e8d-cd3d-7410-b163-664c6c5b99ce.png\")
The volatility came as markets returned following an address to the nation by US President Donald Trump. As Cointelegraph reported, markets were disappointed by the event as Trump avoided key deescalation promises.
Kobeissi founder Adam Kobeissi called the address the “most puzzling part of the Iran War yet.”
“It began with Iran's President stating they have \"no enmity\" towards Americans and ended with President Trump escalating the Iran War, the exact opposite of what we have seen over the last 2 weeks from both sides,” he told X followers.
“It simply does not add up.”", "description": "Bitcoin risks returning to $10,000 per BTC, says Bloomberg analyst as oil keeps crypto and stocks heading lower.", "published": "2026-04-02T15:40:19+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "bitcoin" }, { "slug": "bitcoin-price" }, { "slug": "markets" }, { "slug": "market-analysis" } ], "slug": "bitcoin-weekly-low-oil-fears-analyst-teases-10k-btc-price-target", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "Market Update" } ] }, "id": "258867" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Lise to host tokenized IPO for French defense supplier ST Group", "leadText": "French blockchain-based stock exchange Lise plans to host what it describes as a fully onchain IPO for ST Group.", "author": { "slug": "amin-haqshanas" }, "bodyText": "
French blockchain-based stock exchange Lightning Stock Exchange (Lise) is preparing to host what it describes as a fully onchain initial public offering (IPO), listing aerospace and defense SME ST Group as its inaugural company.
The company called the deal the first IPO on a natively tokenized exchange, where shares are issued and traded as digital tokens rather than recorded through traditional market infrastructure, according to a Thursday announcement shared with Cointelegraph.
CEO Mark Kepeneghian said it could fundamentally change “how markets are built, how companies raise capital, and how investors connect to the real economy.”
The IPO is scheduled for April 9 and is being structured with support from Allinvest Group, acting as both financial adviser and bookrunner. The platform introduces a first-come, first-served allocation for IPO orders and removes subscription and custody fees.
The IPO will test whether tokenized issuance can solve real capital market problems for smaller companies, rather than simply showcase blockchain-based market plumbing. Tokenized securities have long struggled with liquidity, investor access and regulatory friction, and it remains unclear whether a new venue can attract meaningful trading activity or operate smoothly at scale.
Related: NYSE taps Securitize for 24/7 tokenized securities platform
Lise said it holds multiple regulatory approvals, including an investment firm license from the French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority and a DLT Pilot Regime authorization from the European Securities and Markets Authority, allowing it to run trading and settlement on blockchain infrastructure, a company spokesperson told Cointelegraph.
Cointelegraph previously reported that the European Commission had proposed extending the DLT Pilot Regime as part of broader efforts to support tokenized financial markets in Europe.
“Lise operates both a Multilateral Trading Facility (MTF) and a Central Securities Depository (CSD) within a single unified platform, built natively on Hyperledger Besu (a private, permissioned blockchain),” the spokesperson said, adding that shares issued on Lise are born as security tokens on the DLT. “The DLT is the golden source for the securities registry,” they said.
Related: Franklin Templeton, Ondo to launch tokenized ETFs with 24/7 trading via crypto wallets
Investor demand for blockchain-based tokenized stocks is picking up, with total market value nearing the $1 billion mark. Tokenized equities reached about $941 million in total value, up 2.4% over the past 30 days, according to data from RWA.xyz.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e5d-7c5e-754f-abac-e306fcf3d0b8.PNG\")
Activity has grown sharply in some areas. Monthly transfer volume jumped 85% to $2.94 billion, while the number of holders climbed 17% to more than 201,000.
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", "description": "Lise plans to host a fully onchain IPO for ST Group, issuing shares as tokens on blockchain infrastructure, as tokenized stocks near $1 billion in market value.", "published": "2026-04-02T15:36:28+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "blockchain" }, { "slug": "cryptocurrencies" }, { "slug": "france" }, { "slug": "ipo" }, { "slug": "tokenization" }, { "slug": "rwa-tokenization" } ], "slug": "lise-host-tokenized-ipo-french-defense-supplier-st-group", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258862" }, { "category": { "slug": "markets" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "'Memecoin messiah' lost $60M trading mostly SPX6900: He's still not selling", "leadText": "Trader Murad Mahmudov may lose another $1.56 million if its top bet, SPX6900, drops another 20% in the coming weeks.", "author": { "slug": "yashu-gola" }, "bodyText": "Murad Mahmudov, a crypto trader also known as the “Memecoin messiah,” has lost nearly $60 million across his bets in the past nine months. Still, he expects a bullish reversal.
Key takeaways:
Mahmudov thinks SPX6900, which is 96% of his memecoin portfolio, will rise 400,000%.
SPX6900 chart technicals signal another 20% decline in the coming weeks.
On Wednesday, Mahmudov said the market capitalization of SPX6900 (SPX), a memecoin on a mission to overtake the US benchmark S&P 500 index, will grow to $1 trillion from its current valuation of around $250 million, a nearly 400,000% increase.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e14-d380-7617-a841-7805d489b3f3.png\")
For context, Bitcoin (BTC) is the only cryptocurrency that has been able to hit a $1 trillion mark so far, led by growing institutional demand.
Mahmudov’s publicly labeled wallets, tracked under the entity “Muststopmurad” by Arkham Intelligence, currently hold approximately 29.964 million SPX, valued at roughly $7.79 million.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e1c-c6a1-76fe-ad1c-d71ae7ddbba3.png\")
This single position accounts for about 96% of his total tracked portfolio, currently valued at around $8.1 million.
At its peak in July last year, the same portfolio was worth around $67 million.
The drop since then amounts to an unrealized loss of roughly $60 million, as the broader memecoin sector, including SPX, corrected by more than 80% from its highs.
Mahmudov does not appear to be locking in the memecoin losses.
Portfolio tracker DropsTab shows no meaningful sales of SPX6900 or his other major positions, with realized profits and losses on the tracked holdings still at zero.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e20-d376-7183-9ea8-35bb8891c722.png\")
Importantly, the trader appears to be holding more than $6.22 million in unrealized gains instead of taking a profit.
Mahmudov’s refusal to sell also stands out because the broader memecoin market has been brutal toward its dedicated holders.
In a January report, CoinGecko said that 53.2% of all cryptocurrencies tracked since 2021 were inactive, with 11.6 million token failures recorded in 2025 alone that particularly “affected the memecoin sector.”
Related: Memecoins and art market share similar economics — Ki Young Ju
Mahmudov’s smaller wallet holdings also reveal the limits of memecoin conviction.
Public DEX data for ticker-level matches, including RETARDMAXX, HONK and CHAD, shows that some of these names are barely functional.
One RETARDMAXX pair had roughly $44,000 in liquidity but just six transactions and $89 in daily volume, while CHAD showed $842 in liquidity with zero trades and zero makers.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e45-1f71-7660-8063-7e423938cf95.png\")
One HONK pair, meanwhile, had just $1 in liquidity and no recorded activity. Those tokens may still print a price on screen, but in a selloff, they offer little evidence of dependable exit liquidity.
On the three-day chart, SPX6900 appears to be breaking down from a rising wedge, a bearish pattern that typically resolves lower after price slips below support.
SPX has already started losing the wedge’s lower trendline near $0.26 and remains below its 20-, 50- and 100-period exponential moving averages, underscoring weak momentum.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e4e-23ed-7c04-af82-507b8e876c85.png\")
If the breakdown confirms, the measured move points to $0.205, about 20% below current levels.
A 20% drop in SPX would cut roughly $1.56 million from Mahmudov’s memecoin portfolio.
", "description": "Memecoin messiah Murad Mahmudov may lose another $1.56 million if its top bet, SPX6900, drops another 20% in the coming weeks.", "published": "2026-04-02T15:14:23+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "altcoin" }, { "slug": "markets" }, { "slug": "market-analysis" }, { "slug": "altcoin-watch" }, { "slug": "memecoin" } ], "slug": "memecoin-messiah-lost-60m-trading-spx6900-giga-hes-still-not-selling", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "Altcoin Watch" } ] }, "id": "258857" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Ex-Fidelity staff target retail investors with onchain gold arbitrage product", "leadText": "Altura, a DeFi protocol led by former Fidelity and PwC staff, is pitching retail investors an onchain gold arbitrage vault targeting 20% yields as bullion trades near record highs.", "author": { "slug": "christina-comben" }, "bodyText": "Altura, a decentralized finance protocol founded by former Fidelity and PwC staff is launching an onchain gold arbitrage strategy aimed at retail investors, targeting 20% annualized returns, according to a Thursday release shared with Cointelegraph.
According to Altura, the product pools user deposits into a vault that recycles capital through short-duration physical gold trades. Unlike platforms like Robinhood or Revolut that offer passive gold price exposure, Altura claims to be tokenizing the underlying arbitrage process itself.
The company says it has raised $4 million in funding and has already facilitated the movement of about 185 kilograms of gold, representing roughly $28.5 million in cumulative transaction volume, per the release.
Matthew Pinnock, co-founder and chief operating officer of Altura, told Cointelegraph the goal is to “bring an institutional-style gold strategy onchain in a way that retail investors can actually access.”
The launch comes as spot gold trades near record levels after surging to an all-time high above $5,300 an ounce in January, though it has since pulled back sharply. Altura’s launch points to a new phase in tokenized real-world assets, where projects are no longer just offering passive exposure to commodities but are trying to package institutional trading strategies as onchain DeFi yield products for retail users.
Pinnock said Altura’s “revenue-generating trading strategy” was historically used by institutional commodities desks, and that high capital requirements, legal complexity and counterparty risk in traditional bullion arbitrage have effectively kept smaller investors out of this type of trade.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e67-5c45-7e57-893f-99c83fccc2f8.png\")
Gold purchased on behalf of Altura by its trading partner Inessa is tokenized at acquisition, Pinnock said, with those tokens escrowed through each trade and custody transitions recorded via dual cryptographic signatures. Depositors do not hold direct title to bullion but gain exposure to returns generated by the trade flow, he added.
Altura’s setup depends on a network of offchain actors. The company says it is working with Aurellion Labs and Inessa, which in turn partners with air-cargo specialist Zeal Global, to execute and verify trades.
Related: Gold hits record high over $5K, further diverging from Bitcoin
On the targeted 20% yields, Pinnock said the strategy is structured to be “close to delta-neutral,” with trade terms agreed before logistics execution begins so that returns come from price discrepancies between counterparties rather than directional bets on the gold price.
Each arbitrage cycle typically completes within one to two days, allowing capital to be recycled multiple times and limiting exposure to spot moves, he said, while acknowledging that yields would compress if pricing inefficiencies narrow.
Related: Tokenized gold drives weekend price signals while CME futures are closed
The launch comes amid rising interest in “real-world” DeFi yields, as tokenized asset and RWA protocols grew to roughly $17 billion in total value locked in December 2025, according to DefiLlama data.
However, a joint report by RWA.io and Veritas Protocol in that same month found that losses from onchain operational failures in tokenized RWA markets rose to $14.6 million in the first half of 2025, a 143% increase from the previous year, highlighting how complex offchain structures can still translate into user losses.
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", "description": "Ex-Fidelity team's DeFi protocol Altura is rolling out an onchain gold arbitrage product targeting 20% yields, amid record gold prices and rising RWA interest.", "published": "2026-04-02T15:14:20+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "gold" }, { "slug": "defi" }, { "slug": "trading" }, { "slug": "tokenization" }, { "slug": "rwa-tokenization" }, { "slug": "industry" } ], "slug": "ex-fidelity-team-targets-retail-investors-onchain-gold", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258852" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Wallet in Telegram launches perpetual futures trading with Lighter", "leadText": "Wallet in Telegram rolls out perpetual futures via Lighter DEX, enabling leveraged trading on crypto, stocks and commodities directly inside the messaging app.", "author": { "slug": "helen-partz" }, "bodyText": "Wallet in Telegram, a third-party wallet integrated directly into the Telegram app, is rolling out perpetual futures support with Lighter, a perpetuals decentralized exchange.
Launching Thursday, perpetual futures are available to Telegram users through an integrated custodial solution, Crypto Wallet, the platform said in an announcement seen by Cointelegraph.
The integration allows users to open long and short positions with up to 50× leverage across more than 50 assets, including crypto assets such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Toncoin (TON), as well as tokenized commodities and stocks.
“Perpetual trading has traditionally been intimidating for retail users,” said Andrew Rogozov, CEO of The Open Platform, which develops Telegram-based protocols and apps on The Open Network (TON).
The launch pushes leveraged derivatives into one of crypto’s largest consumer distribution channels, extending a trend in which perpetual futures are moving from specialist exchanges into everyday app environments, even as the products remain complex and high risk.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e4f-f2f0-7475-ac88-a39c882f5c5e.png\")
Lighter founder and CEO Vladimir Novakovski said the integration enables near-instant perpetual trading within the app:
“By integrating perpetual trading into Wallet, users can move from chat to market in seconds, making taking a position as simple as sending a message.”
Perpetual futures, or perps, are derivatives contracts that allow traders to speculate on price movements without owning the underlying asset.
Lighter’s perpetual futures rollout on Telegram comes amid massive growth in the sector, with perps almost tripling volume in 2025. According to CryptoQuant, perps accounted for up to 90% of derivatives volumes on major crypto exchanges in 2025.
Related: Coinbase launches 24/7 stock perps for non-US traders
Wallet in Telegram’s integration with Lighter is not the first time perps have reached Telegram.
In October 2025, a similar feature was launched by Blum, a hybrid crypto exchange designed as a Telegram Mini App. As part of the offering, Blum initially enabled traders to go long or short on 20 assets with up to 100x leverage.
Wallet in Telegram rolled out access to tokenized stocks via xStocks partnership with the US crypto exchange Kraken in October 2025.
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", "description": "Wallet in Telegram has launched perpetual futures trading with Lighter, allowing users to trade leveraged positions on crypto and other assets in-app.", "published": "2026-04-02T14:35:38+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "wallet" }, { "slug": "telegram" }, { "slug": "derivatives" }, { "slug": "dex" }, { "slug": "industry" } ], "slug": "wallet-in-telegram-perpetual-future-lighter-dex", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258847" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Riot wallet outflow adds to selling wave among listed Bitcoin miners", "leadText": "Arkham data linked a 500 BTC outflow to Riot Platforms, worth roughly $34 million, as Bitcoin miners and treasury companies navigate listing pressures and volatile market conditions.", "author": { "slug": "christina-comben" }, "bodyText": "Arkham flagged a 500 Bitcoin outflow from a wallet it attributes to Riot Platforms on Wednesday, in a possible sale the company had not publicly commented on by publication time.
The Bitcoin (BTC) wallet outflow sale comes shortly after Riot posted record 2025 revenue of around $647 million, driven by an increase in Bitcoin mining revenue, and amid other recent Bitcoin disposals by large listed miners.
Last week, MARA Holdings disclosed that it sold about $1.1 billion worth of Bitcoin in March to repurchase convertible debt at a discount, reflecting similar moves by other public miners that have collectively sold over 15,000 BTC in recent months as they balance operational needs and investment plans against a more volatile price and cost backdrop.
The pattern is not uniform. Bitcoin treasury companies, including Metaplanet, are still aggressively adding to their holdings. Nakamoto, meanwhile, disclosed in a recent filing that it sold about 284 Bitcoin for $20 million in March.
On the other hand, onchain tracker Lookonchain, citing Arkham data, reported that wallets it links to Empery Digital, one of the largest listed BTC treasuries, transferred out what it described as “the remaining 1,795 BTC” (about $122.5 million) to Gemini after a series of smaller BTC sales throughout March.
Listing pressures are also in focus for some mining-linked stocks. Cango, which has built out its Bitcoin mining operations, announced Wednesday it received a notice from the New York Stock Exchange after its shares traded below $1 for 30 consecutive trading days, triggering a six-month period to regain compliance with continued-listing standards.
On the same day, Cango also announced a new $65 million capital raising transaction and $10 million convertible note financing. Its share price rose on the news, closing the day at $0.42, 4.6% higher, but was trading at $0.41, 3.59% lower, in premarket Thursday, according to data from Yahoo! Finance, well below NYSE requirements.
![\"Bitcoin](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e0e-7210-7fa5-9c0f-9f46ee97a1b7.png\")
Juliet Ye, head of investor relations and communications at Cango, told Cointelegraph that the company would maintain its strategic roadmap despite the notice, and that it had been “proactively implementing cost optimization and efficiency enhancement measures over the past several months,” including divesting obsolete capacity and migrating to lower electricity cost regions.
She added that the recent completion of the two financing transactions, alongside “the adjustment of our treasury strategy,” served as concrete examples of measures to help address both the listing requirements and current market conditions.
Related: Bitcoin mining difficulty falls 7.7% as miner pressure persists
In January, crypto mining hardware maker Canaan Inc. disclosed a similar minimum-bid deficiency notice from Nasdaq after its American depositary shares stayed under the $1 threshold for 30 straight sessions, and it likewise had 180 days to cure the issue.
Despite share price pressure, Canaan has continued expanding operations. The company’s Bitcoin reserves increased in Q1 2026, despite many peers offloading their holdings. Earlier in March, it also acquired a 49% stake in two Texas-based mining sites, part of its broader strategy to diversify geographically and strengthen US market exposure.
Magazine: Bitcoin may take 7 years to upgrade to post-quantum — BIP-360 co-author
", "description": "Arkham flagged a 500 BTC transfer from a wallet tied to Riot Platforms amid ongoing Bitcoin treasury sales by public miners like MARA and Canaan.", "published": "2026-04-02T13:55:44+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "bitcoin" }, { "slug": "business" }, { "slug": "bitcoin-price" }, { "slug": "bitcoin-mining" }, { "slug": "shares" } ], "slug": "onchain-data-flags-fresh-riot-500-btc-sale", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258837" }, { "category": { "slug": "features" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Canada’s bid to ban crypto donations highlights transparency issue", "leadText": "A new bill in Canada would ban crypto donations to political parties, a move which election overseers have supported in past recommendations to Parliament.", "author": { "slug": "aaron-wood" }, "bodyText": "A new bill in Canada, if passed, would ban political parties and other third parties in elections from accepting cryptocurrency donations in a bid to prevent election interference.
The Strong and Free Elections Act would also ban contributions made by money orders and prepaid cards, citing these methods as difficult to track.
The bill notes the potential for foreign actors to influence elections through difficult-to-trace digital payment methods, ensuring Canadian elections “remain free, fair and secure at all times,” according to Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon.
Moreover, as the office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections told Cointelegraph, “The rapid and ongoing change in digital payments creates significant challenges and risks for law enforcement, including for our office.”
The rules for political financing in Canada are complex. Two offices, the Commissioner of Canada Elections and Elections Canada, play “distinct but complementary” roles under the Canada Elections Act’s (CEA). The bill banning crypto political donations would make changes to this Act.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4e2d-3c1b-7902-aa75-73760e6a946e.png\")
Elections Canada, led by Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault, is responsible for conducting federal elections and administering the political financing regime.
The Commissioner of Canada Elections, currently Caroline J. Simard, “is responsible for ensuring that the rules under the Act are complied with and enforced,” a commissioner spokesperson said.
For both agencies, cryptocurrencies present challenges to maintaining free and transparent elections. For the commissioner’s office these include “potential difficulties associated with tracing the source of funding.”
Perrault shared a similar sentiment at an October appearance at the Procedure and House Affairs Committee.
“The problem with those instruments is that they do not provide transparency as to the original source of the contributor.”
He said that “a key principle of our system is that we know where the money comes from. There's no, in my view, valid reason to use a prepaid instrument, a prepaid credit card, to provide money to a candidate or to a political party.”
Perrault acknowledged that they have legitimate uses elsewhere in the economy, “but in terms of financing parties and candidates, I do not believe they are appropriate.”
Under current Canadian law, cryptocurrency qualifies as a legal, “non-monetary” contribution for political parties. Elections Canada told Cointelegraph they therefore must abide by certain reporting requirements.
“For contributions over $200, the political entity must report the contributor's name and address in its financial return.”
However, contributions up to $200, if the donor is a Canadian citizen or permanent resident not in the crypto business, are deemed “nil.”
According to Perrault, the rules for non-monetary donations up to $200 were initially included in the CEA “to allow small-value gifts of goods and services—those valued under $200 and made by a person not in the business of providing such a good or service.” He gave an example of cooking food for campaign staff or lending the use of a personal vehicle.
This becomes more problematic when applied to crypto. Perrault said, “Although contributions of cryptocurrencies are non-monetary contributions under the CEA, the reality of cryptocurrency is that it functions increasingly like money.”
“If a contribution were made in cryptocurrency, it could be seen as a means by which unregulated resources could enter the federal political financing regime.”
He officially recommended that parliament “prohibit making contributions in cryptocurrency and untraceable instruments.”
While the potential for abuse is there, Elections Canada noted that “generally speaking, cryptocurrencies are not widely used to raise funds at the federal level in Canada.”
However, “the reporting framework for contributions does not currently require entities to disclose when a contribution was made via cryptocurrency, so Elections Canada does not have official figures on this.”
Canada has displayed a relatively open, if cautious stance toward crypto. It became the first country to approve a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund in February 2021.
Crypto has appeared in the political discourse before as well. In 2022, a series of blockades and protests against COVID-19 vaccine mandates for truck drivers quickly ballooned into nationwide demonstrations. On Jan. 22 that year, the first convoy of over 1,000 vehicles departed for Ottawa. Over the next few weeks, crowds occupied the streets of downtown Ottawa to protest then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government.
When the government used the Emergencies Act to freeze convoy organizers’ bank accounts, they took donations in crypto. According to CBC, the convoy raised over $20 million in crypto donations, $8 million of which was still unaccounted for by April 2022.
Cryptocurrencies were hailed as a means to circumvent government control and take control over critical funding for the anti-vaccine protest movement.
Mathew Burgoyne, a digital currency lawyer based in Calgary, told the CBC, \"There's a huge limitation, as we've seen, with freeze orders when they relate to cryptocurrency wallets.\"
Crypto entered the political arena again during the 2025 federal elections when Conservative candidate Pierre Poilievre made a number of statements and appearances promoting crypto and blockchain tech.
Related: Why Pierre Poilievre may not be Canada’s crypto savior
In one campaign lunch stop, he bought shawarma using the Bitcoin Lightning Network at Canadian chain Tahini’s, and he talked about Bitcoin while smoking hookah with the company’s vice president.
Under current Prime Minister Mark Carney, the Canadian crypto industry is growing, but with a “regulate first” attitude from policymakers. In November, Parliament introduced the Canada Stablecoin Act as part of the budget, giving the Bank of Canada the power to regulate stablecoins in the country.
As it concerns political donations, some in the industry believe there are higher priorities right now. One industry source at a Canadian crypto firm told Cointelegraph that issues like stablecoin regulation, tokenization and payments modernization take precedence over political donations, which are still quite marginal, in their estimation.
They said that the industry doesn’t support a ban, but there are other policy decisions that present clearer opportunities for the industry to make a difference.
Magazine: Your guide to surviving this mini-crypto winter
Opinion by: Sebastián Serrano, founder and CEO of Ripio.
For much of the past decade, the crypto industry has tried to tokenize niche assets in an attempt to reinvent finance. While creative, this approach has largely missed the core economic truth about where tokenization actually creates value.
In these early stages of blockchain adoption, tokenization works best not at the fringes of the economy, but at its center. The industry’s first instinct — to tokenize illiquid assets — was a miscalculation. The most successful tokenization effort involved the most liquid asset in the world (the US dollar) in the form of USD-backed stablecoins.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-03/019d29cc-a41c-74c4-982b-e406ef97ff4f.png\")
Today, companies are piloting tokenized versions of other highly liquid assets like Treasury bills, smaller currencies and increasingly, stocks. This is not accidental. Tokenization is most powerful when applied to assets that already have massive demand and standardized legal and financial frameworks. Liquidity is the precondition that allows tokenization to move from novelty to infrastructure.
Tokenization should start with assets that are already in high demand. Money, sovereign debt and major financial instruments are the base layer of the global economy. They are used daily by governments, corporations and individuals. When you tokenize these assets, you are not trying to create demand from scratch. You are upgrading the rails on which trillions of dollars already move.
If we look into our recent history, we find that electricity obviously wasn’t first used to power fancy art installations, but factories. Blockchains are no different. They reach their potential when they tokenize money and core financial primitives, not edge-case assets.
Stablecoins succeeded. They mapped directly onto an existing, massive use case. Stablecoins move dollars globally, quickly and cheaply. Tokenized treasuries are gaining traction for the same reason. They represent a real, high-demand asset that institutions already hold at scale.
Tokenization adds the most value where frictions are large and expensive. Bonds move trillions of dollars, but they do so inefficiently. Tokenization compresses settlement from days to minutes. Tokenization allows assets and cash to move together, in real time, without relying on intermediaries. That changes the cost structure and risk profile of financial operations.
Network effects only emerge around assets in very high demand, like money and sovereign debt. When you tokenize them, you create immediate interoperability. Everyone can build around the same unit of account. This is why stablecoins became the backbone of on-chain finance.
Related: Australia's central bank backs tokenization as pilot finds $16.7B upside
NFTs and highly bespoke RWAs are the opposite. They are fragmented by design. Each asset is unique, legally ambiguous and difficult to standardize. That makes them incapable of becoming a shared economic layer. They may have cultural or speculative value, but they cannot anchor broad financial network effects.
Adding programmability to illiquid assets, you can fractionalize ownership or automate certain workflows. You do not, however, unlock new forms of economic coordination. The asset still does not trade frequently. It still lacks deep markets.
With liquid assets, however, tokenization unlocks entirely new financial behaviors. Continuous settlement, streaming payments, automated collateral management. These are just some of the novelties that tokenization can bring.
There are other considerations. Can you use a given tokenized asset as collateral? This is an important question, and the answer is that it mostly depends on liquidity. After all, liquid assets can be safely integrated as collateral into automated systems. Their valuations are transparent and updated in real time.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-03/019d29cc-a78d-7681-8e5c-542ef35ae243.png\")
Illiquid assets, however, have sporadic trades, subjective valuations and wide bid-ask spreads. Their nature makes them very difficult to use as collateral. Tokenization doesn’t solve that problem. This reduces demand for the asset.
Capital efficiency also improves significantly for liquid assets. Tokenized liquid instruments can potentially be rehypothecated, fractionally deployed and programmatically allocated in real time. Capital moves faster across the system. But tokenization doesn’t produce continuous markets for illiquid assets.
Dollars, government bonds and large corporate debt have well-established legal status, issuer accountability and regulatory frameworks. Tokenization can fit within existing financial law, making institutional adoption far more straightforward.
It’s harder for NFTs. Questions about ownership, custody, enforceability and investor protection can outweigh technical benefits. In practice, these uncertainties raise risk rather than reduce it. It’s natural for large, institutional tokenization endeavours to focus on liquid assets first.
The future of tokenization will be defined by assets that are economically central. Obviously, the crypto sector’s early experiments with NFTs were necessary and understandable. It was difficult for NFTs to succeed in the long term. They were focused on the wrong type of asset.
Stablecoins proved this by upgrading the most liquid asset in the world. Tokenized government bonds and equities are the logical next step. This is how blockchains move from experimental technology to foundational financial infrastructure.
Opinion by: Sebastián Serrano, founder and CEO of Ripio.
Prediction market Polymarket’s recent fee expansion has started to affect its numbers, with daily fees and revenue climbing sharply in the days following a March 30 price overhaul.
According to DefiLlama data, daily fees rose from about $363,000 on Monday to over $1 million on both Wednesday and Thursday, while revenue (the portion retained after incentives) reached as high as $995,000 on Wednesday before easing to about $899,000 on Thursday.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4d5c-fe6b-7a49-8a63-7bd7990df091.jpg\")
The jump follows the rollout of a broader fee model on Monday, when the platform expanded taker fees beyond crypto and sports to categories including finance, politics, economics, culture, weather and tech, while keeping geopolitical and world events fee-free.
The spike shows how aggressively Polymarket is monetizing trading activity to maintain continued investor interest amid regulatory scrutiny in the US, Europe and other countries worldwide. Last week, Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, invested $600 million in Polymarket.
The fee and revenue spike comes as prediction markets, including Polymarket, face growing regulatory scrutiny across multiple jurisdictions.
In Europe, Polymarket has faced mounting restrictions, with Hungary and Portugal moving to block or limit access in January over concerns that the platform operates as unlicensed gambling. Regulators in both countries cited licensing issues and, in Portugal’s case, concerns around political betting.
Related: Peter Brandt, Polymarket traders don’t see new Bitcoin highs this year
On March 17, a court in Argentina ordered a nationwide ban on Polymarket, arguing that the platform allowed users to place bets without sufficient identity and age verification. The court said this meant that even children and adolescents could access the platform and place bets without any control.
According to Polymarket’s website, the platform is currently blocked in 33 countries. Kalshi, on the other hand, reports that it’s banned in 52 jurisdictions.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4d5c-bcb0-7ff3-a9a9-75aa7d02ac02.jpg\")
In the United States, at least 11 states have taken legal action against prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi, with several issuing cease-and-desist orders or considering new legislation.
Despite regulatory crackdowns, Polymarket and Kalshi are looking to expand, with both reportedly exploring new funding rounds that could value each platform at around $20 billion.
On March 24, Polymarket and Kalshi introduced new trading restrictions to curb insider trading following criticism over well-timed bets and growing concerns around market integrity.
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", "description": "DefiLlama data shows Polymarket fees jumping from about $363,000 to over $1 million, with revenue peaking near $995,000 before easing.", "published": "2026-04-02T11:26:48+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "europe" }, { "slug": "united-states" }, { "slug": "fees" }, { "slug": "data" }, { "slug": "industry" }, { "slug": "polymarket" }, { "slug": "kalshi" }, { "slug": "prediction-markets" } ], "slug": "polymarket-fees-revenue-surge-after-pricing-overhaul", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258792" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Drift explains $280M exploit as critics question Circle over USDC freeze", "leadText": "Drift said a durable nonce attack helped drive its Solana exploit, as critics questioned why stolen USDC moved for hours without a freeze.", "author": { "slug": "helen-partz" }, "bodyText": "Drift Protocol, a Solana-based decentralized exchange (DEX), confirmed Thursday it was targeted in a roughly $280 million exploit, describing it as a “highly sophisticated operation.”
The platform took to X on to share its findings from a preliminary investigation, saying that the attackers exploited Solana’s durable nonces, a mechanism enabling pre-signed transactions, to seize control and drain funds. The protocol had earlier said it was experiencing an active attack and suspended deposits and withdrawals while coordinating with security firms, bridges and exchanges.
The attack began on Wednesday, with the theft involving multiple assets, including Circle’s USDC (USDC) and various altcoins. Onchain data later showed that the exploiter swapped the majority of assets into USDC, with the funds later bridged to Ethereum.
The incident has attracted scrutiny not only because it appears to involve abuse of a legitimate Solana transaction feature rather than a plain smart contract failure, but also for how funds moved across chains for hours without being frozen, raising questions about intervention by centralized stablecoin issuers.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4d6f-b632-76a3-95da-f5795e6f0e9e.png\")
Solana’s durable nonces are a unique feature allowing transactions to bypass certain expiration windows and enabling users to pre-sign transactions for future execution, offline signing, or complex multisig workflows.
Drift said the attacker used durable nonce-based, pre-signed transactions to gain unauthorized administrative access and execute malicious actions quickly after submission.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4d6f-b87c-7290-9465-f1211235e95b.png\")
Durable nonces have not been widely associated with major exploits on their own, but developers have noted that features enabling delayed execution can introduce complexity and potential risks if misused or combined with other vulnerabilities.
The incident has sparked criticism of the USDC issuer Circle, as the attacker took hours to swap $270 million to the stablecoin before bridging to Ethereum.
Onchain sleuth ZachXBT and others said the company had at least six hours to freeze funds but did not act, contrasting the response with previous cases where wallets were blacklisted.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4d6f-bc61-7fa5-8652-beff7c16665e.png\")
Some industry figures pointed to the gap between Circle’s ability to freeze funds and any obligation to do so.
“Circle could freeze it. But they’re not required to,” pseudonymous user Molu wrote on X, adding that proposed regulatory frameworks such as the GENIUS Act could change that dynamic by requiring intervention under finalized rules.
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The incident marks yet another case in the ongoing debate over intervention by centralized platforms during attacks, with ZachXBT repeatedly criticizing Circle over the issue.
The investigator previously questioned Circle’s response to USDC tied to a Bybit-related hack in late February, prompting a response from Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, who said the company acts on law enforcement requests before freezing funds.
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", "description": "Drift Protocol confirmed a $280 million exploit involving Solana’s durable nonce feature as critics questioned Circle’s response to moving USDC funds.", "published": "2026-04-02T11:13:27+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "circle" }, { "slug": "ethereum" }, { "slug": "hacks" }, { "slug": "defi" }, { "slug": "solana" }, { "slug": "dex" }, { "slug": "scams-and-cybercrime" } ], "slug": "drift-280-million-hack-questions-circle-response", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258787" }, { "category": { "slug": "latest-news" }, "postTranslate": { "title": "Metaplanet buys 5,075 Bitcoin in Q1 to become 3rd-largest treasury", "leadText": "Metaplanet lifted its Bitcoin holdings to 40,177 in Q1 after buying over $400 million of BTC to become the third-largest BTC treasury.", "author": { "slug": "christina-comben" }, "bodyText": "Metaplanet said it acquired 5,075 Bitcoin during the first quarter of 2026 for around $405 million or about $79,898 per coin, making the company the third-largest publicly-listed Bitcoin treasury, according to Bitcoin Treasuries data.
The Tokyo-listed company now holds a total of 40,177 Bitcoin (BTC) on its balance sheet, with an aggregate cost basis of roughly $4.18 billion and an average cost of $104,106 per coin, according to investor materials shared by chief executive Simon Gerovich.
Metaplanet also reported a year-to-date BTC Yield of 2.8% for 2026, a company metric that tracks growth in Bitcoin holdings on a per-share basis rather than income generated across the treasury.
The company separately announced first-quarter fiscal 2026 operating revenue of 2.97 billion Japanese yen (about $18.6 million) from its Bitcoin Income Generation business, which uses collateral-secured Bitcoin option strategies within a dedicated portfolio that is segregated from its long-term BTC stash.
That compares with full-year fiscal 2025 revenue of roughly $53.7 million from the same segment, taking trailing 12-month revenue to around $71.5 million, according to an April 2 filing.
The filings show Metaplanet is pursuing a two-track Bitcoin strategy by expanding its long-term treasury while using a ring-fenced options business to generate revenue that can later be recycled into additional Bitcoin purchases.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4d61-6d7a-7d15-894d-3fd17c5177da.jpg\")
Capital from the income generation can be rolled into long-term Bitcoin holdings after option cycles conclude, allowing Metaplanet to convert derivatives revenue into additional BTC over time, the filing states.
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The company left its consolidated revenue and operating profit forecast for the year ending Dec. 31, 2026, unchanged from guidance issued on Jan. 26, 2026. Metaplanet shares traded lower on Thursday, at $302 per share, down 1.95% from $308 at yesterday’s close, even after the announcement, according to data from Yahoo! Finance.
![](\"https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2026-04/019d4d68-b959-77a8-b435-3919142b51f3.png\")
In the broader Bitcoin treasury space, fellow holding company Nakamoto disclosed Wednesday that it sold 284 BTC for $20 million in March and exited a large part of its Metaplanet stake at a loss in the first quarter, reflecting how listed Bitcoin vehicles remain highly sensitive to price swings and capital market conditions.
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", "description": "Metaplanet expanded its Bitcoin holdings to 40,177 BTC in Q1 2026, becoming the third-largest listed BTC treasury.", "published": "2026-04-02T11:04:27+01:00" }, "tags": [ { "slug": "bitcoin" }, { "slug": "japan" }, { "slug": "bitcoin-options" }, { "slug": "bitcoin-adoption" }, { "slug": "institutions" } ], "slug": "metaplanet-adds-5-075-btc-in-q1-bitcoin-options", "postBadge": { "postBadgeTranslates": [ { "title": "News" } ] }, "id": "258782" } ] } } }, "extensions": { "state": "[{\"name\":\"top_promo_post_rotation_state\",\"value\":{\"selectedTopPromoPostId\":null},\"expiresAt\":1775339948}]" } }