Crypto Pulse Media

Historically, the yuan hasn't had much direct pull on BTC prices. Rumors have swirled for years that a weaker yuan pushes Chinese capital into crypto (and vice versa), but there's zero solid proof.
However, swings in the yuan’s value can still affect bitcoin via macroeconomic channels and foreign-exchange markets, according to newsletter service LondonCryptoClub, whose founder said the ongoing strengthening of CNY could bode well for bitcoin's price.
When the yuan is strengthening, it provides the cover for China to step up stimulus and easing to address the deflationary spiral they’re battling," the founders of the newsletter service told CoinDesk.
A strengthening currency makes imports cheaper, thereby putting downward pressure on domestic inflation. This, in turn, creates room for policymakers to provide economic stimulus.
Coincidentally, calls for Chinese stimulus have increased alongside a stronger yuan, following a string of dismal retail sales and corporate investment data released early this week.
This stimulus could compensate for the expected increase in borrowing costs in Japan and Australia and the prospects of slower rate cuts by the Fed, thereby supporting risk assets, including cryptocurrencies.
Now, coming to the foreign exchange part. A relentless rally in the yuan may prompt the People's Bank of China to intervene by buying dollars against the yuan.
These dollars don't just sit idle; they're recycled or sold against other currencies to maintain a stable currency mix in the reserve portfolio, which holds trillions in major currencies, including the dollar, euros, yen, and others.
This recycling operation ends up dragging the dollar index lower. And as it's well known, a weaker dollar tends to boost demand for dollar-denominated assets like bitcoin and contribute to looser financial conditions (cheaper cash).
Smoothing operations to slow the strength means increasing the money supply as they effectively print CNY to buy dollars. Those dollars also get “recycled”, selling against other currencies to maintain stable FX weightings in their portfolio," founders said.
This feeds broad dollar weakness. Added together, it all feeds into an easier liquidity environment which should be bullish for bitcoin," they added.
The coming weeks will show whether this backdrop can steady bitcoin’s slide and help the market find its footing again.
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The new framework due Jan. 1 will let banks pay interest on clients' e-CNY holdings.
The future digital yuan will be a modern digital payment and circulation means issued and circulated within the financial system, with technical support and supervision provided by the central bank, possessing the attributes of commercial bank liabilities, based on accounts, compatible with distributed ledger technology, and having the functions of a measure of monetary value, store of value, and cross-border payment," Lei wrote.
The plan also proposes to establish an international digital yuan operations centre in Shanghai.
The PBOC began working on the digital yuan program in 2014 under the name of the Digital Currency Electronic Payment or DCEP project to research benefits of the CBDC.
The central bank launched the digital yuan in April 2022. Since then, it has airdropped e-CNY as part of a pilot program to encourage adoption.
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Chinese-language networks now handle a disproportionate share of global crypto money laundering flows, according to a new Chainalysis report.
Chinese-language money laundering networks (CMLNs) now account for around 20% of known laundering activity, the firm said. Inflows to these networks have grown thousands of times faster than those to centralized exchanges or decentralized finance protocols since 2020, as criminals increasingly avoid venues where funds can be frozen.
Chainalysis identified at least $16.1 billion processed by CMLNs in 2025 alone, spread across 1,800 active wallets and six core service types. These range from “running point” brokers who provide initial access to bank accounts and exchange wallets, to sprawling money mule networks, informal OTC desks and so-called “Black U” services that openly trade tainted crypto at a discount.
At the center of the ecosystem sit Telegram-based “guarantee platforms,” which serve as escrow and reputation hubs that connect buyers and sellers of laundering services. Even when individual channels are disrupted, vendors quickly migrate to other channels, keeping operations largely intact.
The speed and scale of these networks suggest deep links to off-chain criminal organizations, including scam operations and cybercrime rings. While recent sanctions and advisories have brought greater scrutiny, Chainalysis said the findings highlight how crypto-enabled laundering has evolved into a resilient, global service industry that adapts quickly to enforcement pressure.
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#hottoken
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China’s exports remain resilient under U.S. tariffs as the yuan stays tightly managed, sending ripples all the way to the crypto market.
In response, China has adapted to Trump's tactics, with tight control over the yuan's exchange rate playing a key role in its resilience.
According to a recent note by JPMorgan, this stance on exchange rate management has helped Beijing preserve export competitiveness and contain deflation, while amplifying dollar-led liquidity cycles during periods of trade stress.
In other words, China's exchange rate management tends to supercharge dollar-driven cash flows during the escalation of trade tensions, like storms that make the flood worse.
This affects bitcoin, which is a macro-sensitive asset. It tanks when the tariff-led risk-off makes the dollar liquidity scarce and rebounds when the tensions ease. That's exactly how bitcoin traded in March-April last year after trade tensions escalated.
China’s influence on crypto prices runs indirectly through currency management and global liquidity cycles, data suggests, unlike the U.S., where it flows directly via capital movements in exchange-traded funds and other alternative investment vehicles.
That interpretation aligns with arguments from Arthur Hayes, who has framed U.S.-China trade deals as largely performative and emphasized that the real economic adjustment occurs through quieter channels.
In his view, tariffs and negotiations set the political backdrop, while FX policy, capital-account tools, and Treasury-led liquidity management determine market outcomes
JPMorgan’s outlook reinforces that logic. China may not allow the yuan to strengthen meaningfully, but the interaction among tariffs, managed FX, and dollar liquidity still shapes the macro environment in which bitcoin trades.
According to JPMorgan Private Bank’s latest Asia outlook, China’s export engine remains resilient, with real exports on track to grow about 8% in 2025 and global market share rising to roughly 15%, despite a dense web of U.S. tariffs, and U.S.-bound exports from China dropping to below 10% of the total.
That resilience reflects diversification toward ASEAN and other regions, as well as a deliberate decision to tightly manage the yuan rather than allow it to appreciate.
The Chinese yuan has strengthened about 4% over the past year off its 2023 lows, but on a calendar-year basis in 2025 it is only marginally stronger against the dollar, underscoring how tightly managed and range-bound the currency remains.
Any recent yuan strength, the bank argues, is likely seasonal, with the medium-term outlook pointing to a stable, range-bound trajectory as policymakers prioritize export competitiveness and grapple with entrenched deflationary pressure.
The bank cautioned that the bar for meaningful yuan appreciation remains high, describing the currency as operating under a low-volatility management framework in which movements are largely dictated by the dollar.
For crypto markets, that framework shifts the focus away from sustained yuan appreciation and toward liquidity transmission.
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The agreement necessitates firms restructure reward programs from a "buy and hold" to a "buy and use" model; however, CCI raised concerns over its broad prohibition.
It carves out rewards programs tied to "bona fide activities or bona fide transactions," and directs Treasury and the CFTC to write rules within a year of enactment.
Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger called the deal a step in the right direction.
We commend Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks for their leadership in reaching this agreement," Mersinger said. "Every day without a clear legal framework is an invitation for top-tier talent, capital, and innovative companies to locate elsewhere."
The Crypto Council for Innovation endorsed the bill while flagging concerns. Its CEO Ji Hun Kim said the new language extends the prohibition framework well beyond last year's GENIUS Act, which barred only issuers from paying rewards.
CCI has been clear that we disagree with assertions about deposit flight concerns from stablecoin adoption," Kim wrote on X. The text, he said, "goes VERY FAR beyond" the GENIUS Act by applying to all digital asset market participants.
Kim urged the committee to advance the bill anyway. "The north star is to ensure that the U.S. can lead on crypto–this is the future. We respectfully ask Senate Banking to move to mark up. The time is now,” he wrote.
Circle Chief Strategy Officer Dante Disparte, whose firm issues the USDC and EURC stablecoins, endorsed the deal without qualification.
Today's compromise on stablecoin yield marks meaningful progress in the CLARITY Act negotiations," Disparte said. He pointed to USDC's growth in cross-border payments, capital markets collateral and agentic commerce.
The United States faces a clear choice in digital assets: lead or be led," he said. “Today’s progress is an encouraging signal that the U.S. is choosing to lead.”
Coinbase had the most at stake in the negotiations. CEO Brian Armstrong posted "Mark it up" after the text dropped. Chief legal officer Paul Grewal said the language preserves activity-based rewards tied to real participation on crypto platforms, which is what the bank lobby had asked for.
The Senate Banking Committee postponed an earlier CLARITY Act markup in January. Other negotiation points remain unresolved, but the yield language has largely been the greatest obstacle.
Firms will need to restructure rewards programs from a "buy and hold" model to a "buy and use" one to comply with the transaction caveats.
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#Notcion

UThe ban applies to fintechs and payment firms, closing the back-end payment rail for cross-border flows, but individual crypto investors can still buy and hold assets.
Payments between an eFX provider and its foreign counterparty must move through a foreign exchange transaction or a non-resident real-denominated account in Brazil, with cryptocurrencies barred as an option.
A remittance firm cannot take reais from a customer, convert the funds into USDT, USDC or bitcoin and settle the payment abroad on a blockchain
The rule does not ban crypto trading. Investors can still buy, sell, hold and transfer cryptocurrency through authorized virtual asset service providers under Resolution BCB No. 521, which took effect February 2. Resolution 561 closes the back-end payment rail used by regulated eFX firms.
The change targets companies like Wise, Nomad and Braza Bank that had built stablecoin settlement into cross-border flows. Nomad, for example, uses Ripple's network to move funds between Brazil and the U.S. and settle in stablecoins, while Braza Bank issued a real-backed stablecoin on the XRP Ledger.
Brazil's crypto market is moving $6 billion to $8 billion a month, with stablecoins accounting for roughly 90% of volume, per Receita Federal data. The country ranked fifth in global crypto adoption in 2025, up from tenth a year earlier. About 25 million Brazilians hold or transact in crypto.
The resolution also restricts eFX to BCB-authorized institutions: banks, Caixa Econômica Federal, securities and FX brokers, and payment institutions acting as e-money issuers or acquirers. Firms without authorization can keep operating but must apply by May 31, 2027. They must use segregated accounts for client funds and file detailed monthly reports.
Resolution 561 expands eFX in one direction. Providers can now handle transfers tied to financial and capital market investments in Brazil or abroad, capped at $10,000 per transaction. The same limit applies to digital payment solutions not integrated with e-commerce platforms.
The rule is the second front in a broader regulatory push. In March, industry associations representing more than 850 companies pushed back against extending Brazil's IOF financial transaction tax to stablecoin operations.
Brazil's regulator is drawing a line for crypto to exist in the market, but not as eFX settlement infrastructure.
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HKMA teams up with mainland regulators to develop a cross-border platform linking cargo data and electronic bills of lading, aiming to cut trade finance friction and plug Chinese supply chains into global markets
The MoU signals growing adoption of bitcoin in real-world plumbing, targeting $1.5 trillion in annual cargo finance where paper work and jams still cost a lot in delays in fraud.
By plugging mainland cargo data into Hong Kong’s international-facing infrastructure, officials aim to reduce friction in cross-border trade while reinforcing the city’s status as the primary conduit between China and global capital markets.
Under the agreement, the parties will study the creation of a cross-border platform under the HKMA’s Project Ensemble framework. The initiative will explore the use of electronic bills of lading and blockchain-based documentation to streamline trade finance, while connecting with Hong Kong’s Commercial Data Interchange and CargoX to facilitate secure data sharing.
For Hong Kong, the move extends its digital asset strategy beyond tokenized green bonds and into the real economy. Instead of focusing solely on sovereign issuance or crypto markets, regulators are targeting the operational bottlenecks in cargo finance, where paper documents, fragmented data, and manual verification continue to slow credit decisions.
If successful, the platform could embed Hong Kong deeper into mainland supply chains while offering international investors and banks a compliant gateway to Chinese trade data. In doing so, the city is attempting to turn blockchain from a pilot project into core cross-border financial infrastructure.
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Afghanistan is giving away its mineral wealth. Through a pattern of deals that export value at the point of extraction, the country is surrendering control over what could – and should – be its greatest hope for a stable and prosperous future.
This is not accidental. Nor is it the inevitable result of geography, decades of war, or even the nature of Taliban rule. It is the outcome of contracts that prioritise immediate cash over long-term management.
Raw ore is being shipped out as Afghanistan signs away its most valuable assets on terms that lock in its own irrelevance.
This is not simply mismanagement. It is a transfer of value. Afghanistan is exporting its resources at the lowest end of the chain, while others – above all China – capture the processing, pricing and strategic leverage that follow.
In a sector defined by control, that is the difference between power and poverty.
Beneath Afghanistan’s mountains sits one of the most concentrated reserves of critical minerals in the world: lithium, rare earths, copper, cobalt – the materials that power batteries, semiconductors, renewable energy and modern weapons.
Geological surveys by the United States and Afghanistan’s own Ministry of Mines have confirmed nearly 90 occurrences, including more than 30 classified as “critical”.
In another setting, they would place Afghanistan at the centre of the 21st century resource economy. Instead, they are being treated as commodities to be moved quickly and monetised cheaply.
For critical minerals, value is created along the chain – processing, refining, pricing and supply. Lose that chain, and the resource itself matters far less. What is unfolding in Afghanistan is the quiet consolidation of a strategy defined elsewhere – and not in Afghanistan’s interests.
This is not new. Under the former republic, mining contracts were often pushed through under political pressure, with weak oversight and little regard for national benefit. Politicians used their influence to secure rights or protect illegal operations. Kickbacks were common.
In the four-and-a-half years since returning to power, the Taliban authorities have issued hundreds of mining contracts covering zinc, lead, copper, antimony, and more, with opaque terms, minimal scrutiny, and a focus on immediate returns. Foreign companies – mainly Chinese, but also from Iran, Pakistan and Turkey – secure access, extract ore, and ship it out. Afghanistan is left with little more than environmental damage and marginal returns.
That institutional weakness persists, but the stakes have changed.
Critical minerals now sit at the core of economic and military power. China recognised this earlier than most and has built its dominance accordingly. Over recent decades, Beijing has invested in mines abroad while consolidating processing capacity at home. Today, it controls the bulk of refining for the world’s key minerals.
When the United States restricted advanced semiconductor exports, China responded by limiting exports of the key ingredients, gallium and germanium – a reminder that supply chains can be weaponised.
What is lost is leverage: the ability to negotiate, build industry or choose partners. Short-term gain becomes long-term structural constraint. Afghanistan’s mineral wealth is being converted into dependency. In a sector defined by control, that is not development. It is surrender.
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Coinbase said on Friday that lawmakers reached a deal on the stablecoin yield provision that has held up the Clarity Act for months, potentially clearing the way for a long-stalled Senate Banking Committee markup.
Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., finalized the compromise on Friday evening, ending a fight that had pulled in the White House, the banking lobby, the largest U.S. crypto exchange and the broader digital asset sector since the start of the year. Punchbowl News first reported the text.
The compromise, codified as Section 404 of the bill, prohibits "covered parties" from paying any form of interest or yield to U.S. customers solely for holding stablecoins, or in any manner "economically or functionally equivalent to the payment of interest or yield on an interest-bearing bank deposit."
The text defines covered parties as digital asset service providers and their affiliates, but excludes permitted stablecoin issuers and registered foreign issuers, which are already barred from paying direct interest under the GENIUS Act.
The prohibition does not extend to "activity-based or transaction-based rewards and incentives" tied to bona fide activities. The text directs the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Treasury Secretary to jointly issue rules within one year defining a non-exhaustive list of permitted activities, expected to include payments, transfers, market-making, staking, governance and loyalty programs.
In a meaningful concession to crypto firms that has not been widely reported, the bill provides that permitted activity-based rewards "may be calculated by reference to a balance, duration, tenure, or any combination of the foregoing." That language gives platforms flexibility to design programs that factor in how much a user holds and for how long, so long as the underlying reward is tied to qualifying activity.
"In the end, the banks were able to get more restrictions on rewards, but we protected what matters, the ability for Americans to earn rewards, based on real usage of crypto platforms and networks," Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad said on X.
If the bill clears the Banking Committee, it will need to be reconciled with a competing version from the Senate Agriculture Committee, which passed its own draft along party lines in January, before going to the full Senate floor. Any final Senate bill would then need to be reconciled with the House's version, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which passed 294-134 last July with bipartisan support, before reaching President Donald Trump's desk.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, warned in March that if Congress fails to pass crypto market structure legislation by May, "digital asset legislation will not pass for the foreseeable future."
Yield was not the only outstanding issue. Tillis, who is not seeking re-election, has also pushed for ethics provisions aimed at preventing the President and other government officials from profiting from the crypto sector, and language around DeFi and illicit finance remains unresolved.
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SBI Holdings has entered into talks to acquire shares in Bitbank, aiming to make the crypto exchange operator a consolidated subsidiary of the major Japanese financial services conglomerate.
SBI Chairman and President Yoshitaka Kitao said in a statement on Friday that the company has submitted a letter of intent regarding the acquisition of shares and has begun discussions with Bitbank regarding a capital and business alliance.
Kitao said the firm plans to acquire Bitbank shares after conducting due diligence and following the necessary internal procedures, with separate discussions regarding the specific timing and structure to follow.
Bitbank operates one of the major domestic crypto exchanges in Japan and says it has not experienced a hacking incident since its founding in May 2014, positioning security as a key part of its offering.
As crypto assets move toward inclusion under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, SBI said bringing Bitbank into the group would strengthen its position in Japan's crypto market.
The talks come as the group continues to consolidate activity into its in-house crypto exchange arm, SBI VC Trade. Last month, it merged crypto exchange Bitpoint Japan into the unit as part of efforts to streamline operations and improve profitability.
Earlier this week, Bitbank rolled out a crypto-linked credit card that enables users to pay their bills in bitcoin and other assets, based on their exchange holdings — a first for the domestic market. The card also offers a 0.5% cashback in crypto on monthly spending.
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What started out as the Kelp DAO exploit is no longer just a bridge story, but is now a crypto referendum on how DeFi handles security, contagion, and accountability.
The immediate damage was already severe. The roughly $292 million exploit hit Kelp DAO’s rsETH bridge, triggered bad-debt concerns at Aave, and spilled into a fresh round of finger-pointing between protocols and infrastructure providers.
The market reaction was brutal. Onchain analysts Lookonchain said Aave’s total value locked fell by nearly $8 billion after the attacker used stolen Kelp DAO-linked assets as collateral, leaving about $195 million in bad debt.
The Block's data now shows Aave’s TVL has suffered a steep drawdown over 48 hours as funds rotated elsewhere, including to Spark
The Block later reported that Aave had modeled two possible bad-debt scenarios tied to the fallout.
Meanwhile, funds stolen in the exploit began moving across chains after Arbitrum froze a large chunk of linked ETH.
A sharp question now circulating across the industry debates not whether DeFi still works, but what kind of risks it is still tolerating in 2026.
Curve founder Michael Egorov put it in the bluntest terms. "WTF? Are we industry of clowns?" he wrote on X, arguing that recent failures tied to centralized points of failure are damaging an industry that still claims to be building the future of finance.
His broader point is landing. The Kelp breach did not just hit one protocol, but traveled through composability.
A single bridge failure turned into multi-protocol collateral risk. Collateral risk turned into lending stress. Lending stress turned into withdrawals. In DeFi, code may be modular, but panic is shared.
Wenzhao Dong, a blockchain analyst at CertiK, told The Block the problem is not that DeFi is inherently broken. Rather, It is that too many teams still treat security as overhead.
The protocols that survive the next cycle will be the ones that view security as TradFi views counterparty risk — as a crucial factor, not an afterthought," Dong said.
Brian Trunzo, chief growth officer at Succinct Labs, shared a similar point. He said that bridges should no longer rely on trust-heavy validator models when proof-based systems exist.
In his telling, the Kelp exploit was a failure in the bridge verification layer, not a typical smart contract bug, and it showed how dangerous single-signer assumptions remain
At this point, if your trust model is less than ZK, you are being grossly negligent. Maybe even reckless," Trunzo told The Block
Sergej Kunz, co-founder of 1inch, said the episode exposed how fragile the shared-pool model can become when one bad asset drives full utilization and effectively traps user funds. Matthew Pinnock, COO at Altura DeFi, added that the speed of the withdrawals showed how fast confidence can unwind once collateral assumptions break.
Metamask security expert Taylor Monahan called Arbitrum’s emergency freeze of stolen ETH a sign that "DeFi f*cking wins," praising the coordination it took to stop more damage.
People need to understand what they're signing, limit what they expose, and have a clear recovery path when things go wrong. This is simply enterprise-grade that is missing in DeFi today,” May said. "The products that earn mainstream trust will be the ones that make security invisible, not ones that ask users to be their own security team."
A lending market can be healthy on its own terms and still get hit by a bridge upstream.
He posited that this very point why the numbers matter beyond headlines. The Block reported earlier this week that DeFi losses had already topped $600 million in just weeks. Add in the roughly $285 million Drift exploit and Hyperbridge’s revised $2.5 million loss estimate, and April is shaping up as another month that forces the sector to answer hard questions about trust assumptions and operational discipline.
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For most of the 18 years since the nine-page Bitcoin whitepaper was published on Oct. 31, 2008, amid the turmoil of the great financial crisis, many have rightly or wrongly speculated about the identity of its pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Attempts to unveil Satoshi have continued ever since, spurred on by the pseudonymous creator's disappearance from public view in 2011. A Newsweek story in 2014 focused on Japanese American systems engineer Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto, while others theorized that Bitcoin could be a CIA-controlled project, to which one expert in the documentary quipped, "I don't think our government is competent enough to do something that smart."
While the ideas put forth in many similar documentaries were ultimately dismissed, "Finding Satoshi," directed by Tucker Tooley and Matthew Miele, attempts to avoid rehashing existing theories with a character-driven investigation that, while surfacing many familiar names, reaches an interesting conclusion.
The film, viewed in advance of its release by The Block, depicts a four-year investigation led by New York Times author, financial journalist, and former M&A investment banker William D. Cohan alongside Quest Research and Investigations' team of private investigators led by Tyler Maroney, drawing on experts across cryptography, programming, and linguistics.
Cohan had originally set out on the documentary interviewing various figureheads from within the industry, including Katie Haun, the former DOJ prosecutor who led investigations tied to Silk Road and Mt. Gox and later founder and CEO of Haun Ventures; Brian Brookes, the former CLO at Coinbase, CEO at BinanceUS, CEO at Bitfury and Acting Comptroller of the Currency; and Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and CEO of Consensys. However, he found little willingness to engage directly on the question of Satoshi's identity.
Cohan told The Block he is not entirely sure why they were so reluctant. "Part of it was, I think, that it was just irrelevant more than a decade after Satoshi wrote his whitepaper and Bitcoin was born," he said. "So, why bother? Part of it, too, might have been that what if we discovered that Satoshi was an evil person… that news could destroy the wealth that they had built up in their bitcoin ownership. In any event, it spurred us all on to try to uncover Satoshi's identity — and I think we did."
So instead, Cohan turned to Maroney and the broader QRI team. QRI's focus is on investigations in the public interest that are very difficult to crack, according to Maroney, and sought to approach the task with empirical evidence and expert testimony from people that Cohan and many earlier documentaries had not spoken to.
QRI outlined six of the most credible, yet usual suspects: Adam Back, cryptographer, CEO of Blockstream, and creator of the Bitcoin whitepaper-referenced Hashcash; Nick Szabo, computer scientist, and creator of Bitcoin precursor Bit Gold; Hal Finney, software developer, creator of Hashcash successor RPOW (Reusable Proof of Work), and the first recipient of bitcoin from Satoshi Nakamoto; Len Sassaman, systems engineer and academic; Paul Le Roux, encryption programmer, and convicted criminal; and Wei Dai, computer engineer and creator of Bitcoin precursor B-money, also referenced in the whitepaper.
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'I suspect you got to the right answer': New Satoshi documentary makes the case Hal Finney and Len Sassaman were Bitcoin's co-creators
By James Hunt
People•April 22, 2026, 9:01AM EDT

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'I suspect you got to the right answer': New Satoshi documentary makes the case Hal Finney and Len Sassaman were Bitcoin's co-creators
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“Finding Satoshi” makes the case that Hal Finney and Len Sassaman were Bitcoin’s co-creators, documenting the latest effort to uncover Nakamoto’s identity.
The film follows a four-year investigation led by New York Times bestselling author William D. Cohan and private investigator Tyler Maroney.
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For most of the 18 years since the nine-page Bitcoin whitepaper was published on Oct. 31, 2008, amid the turmoil of the great financial crisis, many have rightly or wrongly speculated about the identity of its pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Attempts to unveil Satoshi have continued ever since, spurred on by the pseudonymous creator's disappearance from public view in 2011. A Newsweek story in 2014 focused on Japanese American systems engineer Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto, while others theorized that Bitcoin could be a CIA-controlled project, to which one expert in the documentary quipped, "I don't think our government is competent enough to do something that smart."

While the ideas put forth in many similar documentaries were ultimately dismissed, "Finding Satoshi," directed by Tucker Tooley and Matthew Miele, attempts to avoid rehashing existing theories with a character-driven investigation that, while surfacing many familiar names, reaches an interesting conclusion.

The film, viewed in advance of its release by The Block, depicts a four-year investigation led by New York Times author, financial journalist, and former M&A investment banker William D. Cohan alongside Quest Research and Investigations' team of private investigators led by Tyler Maroney, drawing on experts across cryptography, programming, and linguistics.

Cohan had originally set out on the documentary interviewing various figureheads from within the industry, including Katie Haun, the former DOJ prosecutor who led investigations tied to Silk Road and Mt. Gox and later founder and CEO of Haun Ventures; Brian Brookes, the former CLO at Coinbase, CEO at BinanceUS, CEO at Bitfury and Acting Comptroller of the Currency; and Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and CEO of Consensys. However, he found little willingness to engage directly on the question of Satoshi's identity.

Cohan told The Block he is not entirely sure why they were so reluctant. "Part of it was, I think, that it was just irrelevant more than a decade after Satoshi wrote his whitepaper and Bitcoin was born," he said. "So, why bother? Part of it, too, might have been that what if we discovered that Satoshi was an evil person… that news could destroy the wealth that they had built up in their bitcoin ownership. In any event, it spurred us all on to try to uncover Satoshi's identity — and I think we did."

So instead, Cohan turned to Maroney and the broader QRI team. QRI's focus is on investigations in the public interest that are very difficult to crack, according to Maroney, and sought to approach the task with empirical evidence and expert testimony from people that Cohan and many earlier documentaries had not spoken to.

The candidates
QRI outlined six of the most credible, yet usual suspects: Adam Back, cryptographer, CEO of Blockstream, and creator of the Bitcoin whitepaper-referenced Hashcash; Nick Szabo, computer scientist, and creator of Bitcoin precursor Bit Gold; Hal Finney, software developer, creator of Hashcash successor RPOW (Reusable Proof of Work), and the first recipient of bitcoin from Satoshi Nakamoto; Len Sassaman, systems engineer and academic; Paul Le Roux, encryption programmer, and convicted criminal; and Wei Dai, computer engineer and creator of Bitcoin precursor B-money, also referenced in the whitepaper.

One of the first people QRI spoke to was Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of C++, the programming language used for Bitcoin, who said, looking at the Bitcoin code, that Satoshi Nakamoto was a "reasonably good C++ programmer for the time," that would have been proficient in C++, not just C — with Back, Dai, and Le Roux all fitting the bill. Szabo and Sassaman were not known to write in C++, and Finney was less known to use it.

Another link the investigators highlighted was that all of the candidates, except Le Roux, were very active in a 1990s group of coders called the cypherpunks, who had a very libertarian-leaning philosophy.

Phil Zimmerman, who founded PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), which created true email encryption, is seen by many as the "OG cypherpunk," with both Finney and Sassaman having previously worked at PGP for Zimmerman.

Asked by Maroney whether anyone he worked with at PGP could have been part of the formative team that put together Bitcoin, Zimmerman was visibly reluctant to answer. While focusing on email encryption, PGP also explored several other areas, including digital cash.

Finney and Sassaman
Maroney spoke to Alyssa Blackburn, a data scientist at the Baylor College of Medicine and specialist in early Bitcoin mining. She identified around 64 major players during the first two years of Bitcoin, including a lot of metadata on Satoshi Nakamoto's mining and communications activities, which she said provides an idea of their "digital rhythms."

Her analysis of Satoshi Nakamoto's activity shows they were predominantly active between 6 a.m. PST and 10 p.m. PST, suggesting North or South American time zones. Overlaying that with the remaining candidates and their known online activity, including the metzdowd cryptography mailing list that the Bitcoin whitepaper was distributed through, Blackburn surmised that only Finney and Sassaman matched Satoshi Nakamoto's activity profile. She argued it was "inconceivable" that Back, Szabo, or Dai could be Satoshi Nakamoto based on that analysis.

The New York Times recently suggested Back as a leading candidate based on linguistic analysis and circumstantial evidence, including a 2015 email attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto, though its authenticity is widely disputed. Back also strongly denied the NYT's claims.

QRI also looked into the same email. However, Maroney told The Block that multiple sources said it was inconsistent with Satoshi Nakamoto's known writing style and focused on topics, such as bitcoin's price, that Nakamoto did not typically discuss. The email was also not signed using Nakamoto's cryptographic key, a standard method of verifying identity, and may have originated from a compromised account, he added.

From her research, Blackburn said that qualitatively, Finney and Sassaman looked like the most viable candidates.

One of Maroney's concerns about Sassaman was his propensity to "bash" Bitcoin, referencing social media posts in 2010 and 2011 describing it as "bunk" and "overhyped," with its success due to "irrational exuberance."

Cohan and the investigators' concerns over the case for Finney were that he was a coder, not an academic writer, and the Bitcoin whitepaper was an academic paper.

PGP Corp. co-founder Will Price said that, looking at the structure of RPOW, and having spent 15 years working with Finney, he could tell it was coded by Finney instantaneously. However, unlike Hashcash and B-Money, Price noted that RPOW was not credited in the Bitcoin whitepaper, questioning why that would be, as it was "as close to Bitcoin as anything could possibly be."

However, when Maroney tried to make the case against Finney being Satoshi Nakamoto, Price laughed and wished him "good luck." Maroney made the point that Finney was not known for coding in C++, and again Price laughed.

"To an engineer of Hal's caliber, a different language is like chicken versus steak," Price said. "It has no meaning and he can change languages in hours," noting that he was already having to work on C++ tasks at PGP. "A lot of the Bitcoin code is very similar to what Hal does in his normal C++, but then he sticks in some things to throw you off the trail," Price said.

Maroney suggested Price's point seemed to be that Finney intentionally used C++, a language he was not known publicly for, to code in, because it provided "additional cover."

By 2008, Price said the company was running out of things for Finney to do and suggested he just keep working on RPOW — and he thinks that's exactly what happened.

Price explained that there was a two-month gap from Oct. 31, 2008 (the date Bitcoin's whitepaper was published) to early January 2009 (Bitcoin's genesis block), where Finney made no PGP commits. Price said they still knew what his tasks were, and Finney, a remote employee, would send weekly updates, confirming things like he was still working on his Windows fingerprint technology.

"So he's working on C++ on Windows, which is what Bitcoin is written for and in," Price said. "What was going on in those two months that the last two months before the release of the Bitcoin source code, Hal made no commits to the source code at work? What was he working on? I think it was Bitcoin."

Finney passed away due to complications from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in August 2014. Toward the end of Finney's life, PGP Corp. co-founder Jon Callas and Zimmerman took a trip to visit him, where Callas said he asked him if he was Satoshi Nakamoto.

"His answer was, why would I deny being Satoshi if I were because I have a fatal disease. And you know, there's no reason in the world for me to deny it because I'm not going to be around in two or three years, but no, I'm not," Callas recalled. "At the time, I interpreted that as a non-denial and interpreted it as a yes," he said.

But, of course, it would be reasonable to deny it.

"I don't know why you would go through the effort of making everything anonymous, creating a pseudonym, going through all this effort, and then you just start randomly telling people," Price said. "Right? I mean, you're going to be consistent about that or not."

"One of my big takeaways from this meeting is these people miss Hal. They respect Hal, they believe his story finally needs to be told," Maroney reflected. "They want the truth out there. And yeah, maybe Satoshi can never actually move a bitcoin, but three eyewitnesses, experts in the field, friends of Hal's confirming his identity, seem like good corroborating evidence."

Though not noted in the documentary, following the original Newsweek story connecting Finney and Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto in 2014, Forbes and others also pointed out that the pair had both lived in Temple City, a small suburb of Los Angeles with a population of around 35,000, just a few blocks away from one another. While this doesn't prove anything, many have speculated on the coincidence and suggested that Finney may have used local directories at the time for inspiration on the pseudonym.

"We were well aware of this, confirmed what others had previously found, worked to find any other connections between Nakamoto and Finney, and ultimately decided not to include it in the film," Maroney told The Block. "I'll note this point can be used to strengthen our case."

A spanner in the works?
Just when he thought they were getting somewhere, Maroney was presented with an October 2023 article from "professional cypherpunk" Jameson Lopp, co-founder and chief security officer of Casa, titled "Hal Finney Was Not Satoshi Nakamoto."

"Researching a lot of Hal's and Satoshi's early activity, I discovered several different conflicts that showed that they were both doing things at the exact same time when Hal could not have been at a computer on the internet," Lopp said in an interview with Maroney.

For example, Lopp looked at back and forth emails and a Bitcoin transaction between Satoshi Nakamoto and early Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn with timestamps while Hal Finney was provably running a race.

"From the very simple fact that it's not possible to be in two places at the same time, it's highly unlikely that Satoshi and Hal were the same person," Lopp said.

Maroney said he had a hard time squaring the conversations with the PGP team and Lopp, but went on to ask what other explanations Lopp may have.

"One possible explanation is that Satoshi was a group of people. Whether Hal was like 'in on it' will, I think, never really be able to prove," Lopp said. "But Occam's razor, it's difficult to keep secrets amongst multiple people," he added, echoing Puckett's observations. "Unless they're all dead" — which could also help explain why Satoshi Nakamoto's funds were never moved.

'Unless they're all dead'
At first, Maroney thought Lopp was "blowing up" his theory. "But then I realized he gave me the answer because Hal Finney was not the only candidate who was no longer with us," he said.

So the investigators sought the help of Meredith Patterson, a coder involved in computer security, linguistics, and civil rights. But the real reason they wanted to talk to her was that she is also the widow of Len Sassaman.

Maroney recalled a conversation with PGP's Price about Sassaman's life as an academic and a PhD student focused on anonymity.

"When you look through the whitepapers of Len Sassaman, he was really great at writing whitepapers," Price said. "He would have really cared about checking every reference as they did, the precision and the correctness of every part of that whitepaper. He is the kind of person who would really have gone through that, gotten it right."

"The whitepaper is written in a certain way, that is someone who writes whitepapers," Price continued. "And that's not Hal."

Len lived in Europe during the time Satoshi Nakamoto was active, and despite being American, his writing often contained British spellings and phrases, just like Nakamoto. His PhD advisor was David Chaum, the inventor of DigiCash and widely recognized as the "godfather" of cryptocurrency.

Patterson and Sassaman met at CodeCon, a conference he ran in San Francisco with Bram Cohen, an American computer programmer, best known as the author of the peer-to-peer BitTorrent protocol.

Like Finney, Sassaman suffered from debilitating health conditions, dealing with Crohn's disease and severe calcium depletion in his spine, using a cane by the time he was 30, Patterson said. Sadly, on July 3, 2011, around six months after Satoshi Nakamoto's last public post, Sassaman took his own life.

Back in 2005, Finney had presented RPOW at CodeCon.

"I had read a couple of articles about Hashcash, which was basically the forerunner of RPOW," Petterson told Maroney. "But it was fascinating to see that transformed into a system for actually using it as money."

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Petterson confirmed that Finney and Sassaman were friends, had worked together at PGP, and were "definitely" in touch in 2008. "They were certainly still interacting online," she said.

Asked what she had thought about Bitcoin when she first heard of it, Patterson said she immediately went to read the whitepaper and saw it as a "neat way to get around the central operator." Asked about the use of a pseudonym, she said that it did not surprise her. "Whoever was behind it had definitely been reading the cypherpunk's mailing list. They were familiar with the kinds of problems that the cypherpunks were interested in solving," she said.

Sassaman was also an expert in stylometric anonymization, small stylistic changes to writing that blur the fingerprints used to help identify who wrote it. Something that could explain the inconclusive analysis of the Bitcoin whitepaper.

Discussing the theory that Sassaman's talents could have complemented Finney's in the creation of Bitcoin, Patterson said she thinks it is plausible. "Is it possible that Len would have helped Hal and not told you?" Maroney asked. "Oh, yes, absolutely," she said.

The skills and experience needed to create Bitcoin
BitTorrent's Cohen, who had known both Finney and Sassaman, described Sassaman as his best friend, having been roommates for a long time. In a series of social media posts in 2021, Cohen said: "Len posted pseudonymously on the cypherpunks list constantly, including at least one fleshed-out and long-lived handle."

"The implication with that one seemed to be that it was Hal or Len or some combination of the two, very unsure though," Cohen added. "Len also tried to get me to publish BitTorrent pseudonymously, which seems indicative of something."

Asked by Maroney why he personally saw Finney and Sassaman as Bitcoin's creators, Cohen said they knew each other, and they both had a pattern of posting pseudonymously to cypherpunks. "What they liked doing exactly matched, you know, what we know about Satoshi Nakamoto, because Satoshi, first and foremost, was a cypherpunk," he said.

In terms of the skills and experience needed to create Bitcoin, Cohen said Finney exhibited those especially, whereas Sassaman would be more of a fit for the human language element of it — hinting at the whitepaper and forum post contributions — which also explains how Finney could have been running a race while Sassaman was acting as Satoshi, Maroney suggested.

But one problem remained. Why would Sassaman publicly bash Bitcoin? "You don't make all your pseudonyms agree with each other about everything or everyone's going to know who your pseudonyms are," Cohen said. "If you have some identity that you're trying to hide, then your normal public persona has very little to gain by agreeing with a hidden identity, particularly if it's some controversial topic like Bitcoin."

Who is Satoshi?
For Maroney, the pieces were falling into place. Meeting with William D. Cohan, he said that, "For the entire investigation, we've been pursuing Satoshi as if he were one person. But all of our evidence is leading to the conclusion that it was two people collaborating."

"If we take all of the circumstantial evidence, all of [the] empirical evidence, and all of the eyewitness testimony, the conclusion is that Hal Finney and Len Sassaman collaborated to create Bitcoin," Maroney said. "That the two of them were Satoshi Nakamoto."

Unlike the early interviewees, some crypto industry insiders were willing to comment on the documentary's conclusions. In a press release accompanying the film's official trailer last month, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said: "It's the most thoughtful take on this subject I've seen out there, and I suspect you got to the right answer." Coinbase is also a supporter of the film.

After seeing the documentary, Lopp also reportedly told the filmmakers it was "easily the most expertly produced Bitcoin documentary" he had seen, adding that it is "a plausible take that may finally put an end to chasing ghosts."

Many have criticized attempts to uncover Satoshi's identity, fairly citing potential threats to their families and friends. Participants in the documentary, including Zimmerman, were also wary, describing it as "dangerous" and "people could get hurt."

However, notably in this case, the widows of both Finney and Patterson were willing to take part in the documentary themselves and seemed to agree with the plausibility of the investigation's ultimate conclusions.

"I liked your movie," Fran Finney said. "The reason I [initially] declined to speak with you is because I misunderstood where your movie was going. I had been approached by a number of different projects, and I assumed this project was similar. And most of those projects are just very exploitive. But after I saw the film and what you've done with it so far, I was really touched and impressed and blown away."

Asked if she ever asked her husband if he was Satoshi Nakamoto, Fran Finney said she did, but that he just laughed and said no. "Is it possible he helped build it and didn't tell you?" Maroney said. "Yes, I think he did help build it," she said. "You also brought forth the possibility that I hadn't considered that Hal might have collaborated in the writing of the code for Bitcoin. And I mean, he did. He was excited to write that. The whitepaper itself, I didn't think he wrote. But he could have helped. Making edits for it. So what you present in the film makes sense to me."

Reflecting on the interview with Fran Finney, Maroney said it reminded him of a Forbes interview with Hal Finney shortly before he died. "In the conclusions to the article, Hal was asked if given his contributions to open source cryptography, he could perhaps be considered one of the creators of Bitcoin," Maroney said.

PGP's Will Price also picked up on the same thing. "When he phrased it the final way, which was whether he's one of the creators of Bitcoin, Hal raised his eyes and eyebrows, which in the article is identified as his way of saying yes," Price said. "And he asked him if he was proud of that work. And Finney raised his eyes and he smiled."

"I think, for Hal, it was always true to say that he didn't create Bitcoin. He didn't create Bitcoin, it was a team. But if you ask him, are you one of the creators of Bitcoin? Yes," Price said. "At this point, I think it's better that people understand that these people who are long past did create it. They had all of the best intentions and didn't do it for the money."

"Hal's influence on the world in a number of behind the scenes but extraordinarily important things ought to be valued," PGP's Callas said. "He is the person who is not like what you see out there in the cryptocurrency world and that is why he deserves the accolades because he is proof positive that you don't have to be a horrible person to make a big impact on the world."

"That's his big legacy. He left his footprint. And I'm so proud of him," Fran Finney said.

It's important to note that the documentary emphasized that "based on an extensive investigative review, the filmmakers affirm that there is no evidence or reasonable inference that Fran Finney or Meredith Patterson have any access, direct or indirect, to Satoshi Nakamoto's private keys."

"I admire Hal and Len almost more than anyone I've ever investigated because their motives I learned were so much more beautiful and pure than the motives of most people who want to hide behind something," Maroney concluded. "Usually I'm looking for people who've done something wrong and are hiding behind a mask. But in this case, I was looking for somebody or a few people who did something really creative and innovative. These were
While Satoshi Nakamoto's identity remains uncertain, perhaps never to be provably confirmed, the investigation arguably makes one of the most compelling cases to date that Finney and Sassaman jointly collaborated to launch Bitcoin.
Finding Satoshi was released globally on April 22 via FindingSatoshi.com.
#PEPEATH
#VeChainNodeMarketplace
#fahadcreator
#XRPRealityCheck
#ZeroFeeTrading

XRP-focused crypto treasury firm Evernorth has submitted a Form S-4 registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a process to go public through a business combination with special purpose acquisition company Armada Acquisition Corp. II.
The Wednesday filing shows that the combined entity will operate as Evernorth Holdings Inc. after the proposed merger, and is expected to list on Nasdaq under the ticker symbols XRPN for its Class A common stock and XRPNW for warrants.
The filing estimates that the merged entity will hold at least 473 million XRP at launch, including contributions from Ripple and open-market purchases funded by the merger proceeds. Previous reports stated that the merger transaction is expected to raise over $1 billion in gross proceeds, including investments from SBI, Ripple, Pantera Capital, Kraken, and GSR.
An S-4 filing is a preliminary registration statement required by the SEC for companies seeking to publicly register shares in connection with a business combination, such as a merger or acquisition.
Evernorth, established in 2025, is an institutional vehicle primarily holding and managing XRP as its core reserve asset. Its strategy includes acquiring XRP, participating in the XRP ecosystem, generating yield through lending and liquidity provisioning, operating validators on the XRP Ledger, and utilizing Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin for certain operations.
Evernorth is built to provide investors more than just exposure to XRP's price," Evernorth CEO Asheesh Birla said in an October statement. "As we capitalize on existing TradFi yield generation strategies and deploy into DeFi yield opportunities, we also contribute to the growth and maturity of that ecosystem. This approach is designed to generate returns for shareholders while supporting XRP's utility and adoption."
Meanwhile, Armada Acquisition Corp. II, completed its initial public offering in May 2025, raising approximately $230 million.
According to The Block's crypto price page, XRP is currently the fourth-largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $89.6 billion. The cryptocurrency is trading at $1.46, down 4% in the past 24 hours, leading up to 10:30 p.m. ET.
#altcycle
#writetoearn
#hottrendingtopics
#FlokiCoin
#hottoken

The text released Friday blocks crypto firms from offering stablecoin yield offerings that look like bank deposits, but "bona fide" transactions are allowed.
Coming to an agreement means there's likely nothing in the way of a Senate Banking Committee hearing (known as a markup) that could finally advance the legislation another key step in its progress through the Senate, though there are a number of other negotiation points that haven't been publicly resolved.
Mark it up," Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote in a posting on social media site X. His company had been at the center of the talks and potentially had the most to lose from restrictions on stablecoin rewards.
Coinbase's chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, said in a separate post that this language "preserves activity-based rewards tied to real participation on crypto platforms and networks, which is what the bank lobby said they wanted," adding that "we’re focused on getting a bill done and are satisifed that this language should not be the basis of any objection."
In its legalese, the new text reads, "No covered party shall, directly or indirectly, pay any form of interest on yield (whether in cash, tokens, or other consideration) to a restricted recipient — (A) solely in connection with the holding of such restricted recipient's payment stablecoins; or (B) on a payment stablecoin balance in a manner that is economically or functionally equivalent to the payment of interest or yield on an interest-bearing bank deposit."
This restriction does not apply to incentives "based on bona fide activities or bona fide transactions" that are different from yield generated by interest-bearing bank deposits, the text said, maintaining an approach to rewards that's similar to what financial firms offer on credit card activity. The restriction does apply to loyalty programs or similar efforts.
One individual at a crypto company said this would require digital asset firms to restructure how they offer yield, moving from a "buy and hold" system to "buy and use" to meet the transaction caveats in the text.
It's difficult to say how exactly this might work, the person said, pointing to the rulemaking provisions in the text, which direct the Treasury Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission to launch a rulemaking within a year of the bill becoming law that lays out more clearly how and when crypto firms can offer yield.
The way the rulemaking provision is worded could give regulators latitude in how they define what crypto companies can do with yield products, said Corey Frayer, director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America. He said the wording of the rulemaking section could allow crypto firms to conduct the activities and then pay the returns back to customers. The wording in the section allows regulators to consider balance, duration and tenure as a factor in rewards calculation. Other factors that would be considered include the definition of the activity and whether some sort of incentive program is used.
Senators Alsobrooks and Tillis have been negotiating details of the text for the last few months, after a Senate Banking Committee markup on the overall Clarity Act was postponed last-minute in January. Since then, bank lobbyists and crypto insiders have been weighing in on the compromise effort, sometimes in session hosted by the White House.
The text also includes anti-evasion language.
In March, the lawmakers had said they'd struck an agreement that blocked crypto firms from offering yield that looked like deposit interest but did allow them to structure rewards programs that didn't rival banks' core products.
In a statement, Digital Chamber CEO Cody Carbone said the trade association "welcomes the public release of stablecoin yield language as an important step toward resolving one of the final issues standing between the Committee and a markup. We are encouraged to see this process moving forward and will continue advocating for the power of rewards to drive consumer utility, competition, and innovation across the digital asset ecosystem.
#BinanceHerYerde
#haroonahmadofficial
#YourFavoriteInfluencer
#UnlockAlert
#LUNCDream

A new report from Bitget and Polymarket reveals that prediction markets are evolving into a $240 billion industry driven by retail users who are trading more frequently on everything from crypto to politics.
The data suggest growth is being driven by frequency rather than trade size. More than 82% of users traded less than $10,000 during the quarter, a sign the market remains dominated by retail participants. Instead of placing large, infrequent bets, users are engaging in smaller trades more regularly.
Prediction markets are becoming less about capital and more about consistent, repeated actions,” said Alvin Kan, Bitget Wallet's chief operating officer. “What we're seeing is a behavioral shift: The market is scaling with more taps per day, not bigger trades.”
Crypto remains the primary entry point for new users, accounting for nearly 40% of early activity. Its continuous trading and familiar price movements make it a natural starting place. But as users become more active, participation shifts toward markets tied to real-world events.
The report frames this evolution as a structural change. Prediction markets are no longer driven solely by spikes around major occurrences like elections. Instead, they are becoming continuous systems where users return regularly to track and respond to changing probabilities.
As prediction markets evolve into core financial infrastructure, distribution becomes as important as the underlying market itself,” said Elden Mirzoian, director of growth and partnerships at Polymarket. “We're seeing a shift from episodic trading to more continuous engagement.”
That shift is also changing how these markets are used. Prices increasingly reflect real-time expectations around macroeconomic trends, politics and culture, and are beginning to appear alongside traditional data sources in media and financial analysis.
Growth has accelerated quickly. Monthly trading volume has climbed from about $1.2 billion in 2025 to more than $20 billion in early 2026, while active wallets have more than tripled in six months. Industry projections cited in the report estimate the market could reach $240 billion in volume this year, with a longer-term path toward $1 trillion.
As participation increases, the focus is moving toward access and usability. Wallets are emerging as key entry points, helping users discover markets and interact with them in real time.
#MegadropLista
#Kriptocutrader
#jasmyustd
#haroonahmadofficial
#GamingCoins

As Wall Street moves onchain, the year's biggest crypto hack and DeFi crisis is forcing a rethink of risk, security and market structure, industry insiders told CoinDesk.
In the weeks leading up to the hack, private credit giant Apollo Global Management (APO), which oversees $900 billion, inked a strategic partnership with Morpho to support lending markets with an option to acquire governance tokens of the protocol, too. Around the same time, the world's largest asset manager BlackRock (BK) brought its tokenized money market fund onto decentralized exchange Uniswap
The exploit is unlikely to derail traditional finance (TradFi) pushing deeper into onchain finance, industry insiders argued, but highlighted what DeFi needs to fix before larger pools of capital can move in.
DeFi platforms are pioneering new ways for investors to utilize their capital more efficiently," said Nick Cherney, head of innovation at Janus Henderson, an asset manager that oversees about $500 billion in assets. "Pioneers will always face risks."
Failures like the Kelp DAO exploit can slow momentum, Cherney said, but they also force improvements. Over time, those pressure points tend to produce stronger systems, he argued.
The longer-term shift, in his view, is already taking shape. Tokenized real-world assets — such as funds, bonds and credit — are starting to anchor DeFi markets, bringing legal frameworks and risk controls that traditional finance has refined over decades.
This is a speed bump for sure, but not a roadblock," Cherney said.
Episodes like this one could accelerate that transition, Cherney said.
For security specialists, the lesson is more direct: the current setup is not enough.
DeFi and onchain asset management operate in a highly adversarial environment,” said Paul Vijender, head of security at Gauntlet. “Systems are only as secure as their weakest links."
That reality is pushing the industry toward more comprehensive defenses. Zero-trust architectures — where no part of the system is assumed safe — are becoming harder to avoid, he argued.
In practice, that means layering protections: continuous monitoring, stricter controls, built-in redundancies. Not relying on a single safeguard
Evgeny Gokhberg, founder of digital asset manager Re7 Capital, said many of the industry’s "best practices" now need to become baseline requirements.
That includes timelocks on key governance actions, stricter multi-signature controls, tighter collateral standards and stronger safeguards around bridges — one of the most common points of failure in DeFi.
The industry needs to treat them as baseline requirements, not best practice," he said.
Bhaji Illuminati, CEO of Centrifuge Labs, sees the shift as part of a broader compression of financial evolution.
TradFi has had decades to build up layers of protections," she said. "DeFi is doing that too, but on a vastly accelerated timeline."
For institutions to allocate capital at scale, she argued, a few conditions need to be met.
First is clarity: investors need to know exactly what they own, with verifiable collateral and legal structures that map to real-world risk.
Second is reliability: smart contracts, oracles and governance processes must behave in predictable, auditable ways.
Third is liquidity that holds up under pressure, allowing capital to move in and out without distorting markets.
Being open and secure is not mutually exclusive," Illuminati said. "The goal is to make trust explicit and verifiable."
Going forward, every layer of the DeFi stack needs to make security their number one priority,"she said. "This is becoming increasingly important in the age of artificial intelligence."
#QueencryptoNews
#writetoearn
#Robertkiyosaki
#EconomicAlert
#TradingCommunity

A new design proposed by venture fund Paradigm would let holders privately timestamp proof that they control vulnerable keys before quantum computers arrive, creating a possible rescue path if Bitcoin ever sunsets old addresses.
The obvious defense is a soft fork (or an upgrade to existing network rules) that eventually stops allowing spends from those legacy address types, forcing holders to move into quantum-safe formats before attackers can derive their private keys.
Prominent developer Jameson Lopp and five other developers proposed exactly that in mid-April through BIP-361, which would phase out quantum-vulnerable addresses on a five-year timeline and freeze any coins that fail to migrate.
That proposal created a different problem, however. Satoshi, and every other long-dormant holder, would have to wake up publicly or risk losing access to their assets.
Dan Robinson, a general partner at Paradigm, published a proposal Friday for a way around that trade-off that revolves around the concept of Provable Address-Control Timestamps, or PACTs.
The core idea is not to move coins but timestamp proof of ownership at a specific date and reveal nothing to the public until the owners of those wallets actually need to spend.
A holder generates a random salt, which is a piece of secret data used to make a cryptographic commitment unique and unguessable, and uses BIP-322, a standard for signing messages from a Bitcoin address without spending from it, to produce a proof of ownership.
The salt and proof are bundled together into an onchain commitment and timestamp it through OpenTimestamps, a free service that anchors data onto the Bitcoin blockchain through a single batched transaction. The salt, proof, and timestamp files stay private.
If Bitcoin later activates a soft fork that freezes quantum-vulnerable coins, the protocol could include a rescue path that accepts a STARK proof, a type of zero-knowledge proof that remains secure against quantum computers, showing the holder created their commitment before quantum hardware existed.
The holder submits that proof when they want to spend, and the network releases the coins. The redemption reveals nothing about which address, which amount, or even when the original timestamp was created.
These PACTs also address a specific gap in BIP-361 by including a rescue path for wallets derived through BIP-32, the deterministic key generation standard introduced in 2012. Pre-2012 wallets, including most of Satoshi's known addresses, do not use BIP-32 and cannot be rescued through that path.
As such, Robinson stated that the PACTs require Bitcoin to eventually adopt a STARK verification protocol, which would itself need a separate soft fork with broad community consensus.
The verification infrastructure does not exist in Bitcoin currently and would need what Robinson calls "substantial new plumbing," such as multisig wallets, complex scripts, and hardware wallet support that would all need careful standardization.
That last constraint is the one PACTs cannot work around.
The protocol only protects Satoshi if Satoshi himself, or whoever currently controls those keys, makes the commitment. If Satoshi is genuinely gone, no PACT can be retroactively created. The coins remain exposed to whichever scenario plays out first, quantum theft or community freeze.
What PACTs do offer is a way to make the BIP-361 debate less binary. The current freeze proposal forces a choice between protecting against quantum theft and respecting dormant property rights.
Whether Satoshi will use it is the question PACTs cannot answer.
#PresidentialDebate
#orocryptotrends
#INNOVATION
#UnicornChannel
#yasirazam

AMD’s expansion and improved financing terms highlight Riot’s shift beyond bitcoin mining and strengthen confidence in its growing data center business.
Riot also secured improved terms on its $200 million bitcoin-backed credit facility with Coinbase, lowering the rate to a fixed 6.15% from 8.3% and releasing 1,544 of pledged collateral bitcoin, signaling growing lender confidence in its expanding data center business.
Together with the AMD deal and improved credit terms, investors are paying a premium for the stock. “Market pricing in lower cost of capital as the expanded AMD deal drives lender confidence,” said Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck.
Riot was one of the last few 'pure play' mining companies left that didn't get into hosting AI computing, while others opened up their data centers to move away from mining. Until recently, activist investor Starboard started to urge the management to accelerate its transition from bitcoin mining to an AI infrastructure provider.
The move to expand its data center business to host AI computers appears to be paying off for the Castle Rock, Colorado-based company.
The firm reported total revenue of $167.2 million for the quarter ended March 31, up from $161.4 million a year earlier, supported by $33.2 million in initial data center revenue. However, bitcoin mining revenue fell to $111.9 million from $142.9 million, mainly due to lower bitcoin prices and increased mining competition. The mining company's shares are up about 147% over the last 12 months, while bitcoin fell nearly 17%.
The company, which previously held onto all its mined bitcoin, is also accelerating its bitcoin sales. According to Bitcoin Treasuries data, the company sold 3,688 BTC during Q1. The company ended March with 15,679 BTC and $282.5 million in cash.
#TrumpSaysIranConflictHasEnded
#FedRatesUnchanged
#AftermathFinanceBreach
#MegadropLista
#XRPRealityCheck

Bitcoin recovered from a midweek dip to $75,500 to climb back above $78,000 by Saturday morning in Asia, with the Senate's stablecoin yield compromise removing a key roadblock to crypto market structure legislation.
Equities had a much better week. The S&P 500 closed 0.3% higher Friday at an all-time high, marking a fifth straight weekly gain on the back of strong tech mega-cap earnings.
The Nasdaq 100 advanced 0.9% to its own record. Apple gained 3.2% after a better-than-expected revenue outlook. Oracle climbed 6.5% on news it had joined the list of AI firms working with the Pentagon's classified networks.
A big crypto development was on the policy side.
The Senate released the long-negotiated Clarity Act compromise text Friday, ending months of negotiations between crypto firms and bank lobbyists. The agreement, hashed out by Senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks, would ban stablecoin issuers from offering yield based purely on holding reserves but preserves activity-based reward programs that crypto firms structure as incentives for using their platforms
Coinbase, which had been at the center of the talks, signaled support immediately, with Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal stating the language "preserves activity-based rewards tied to real participation on crypto platforms and networks, which is what the bank lobby said they wanted."
A markup, the Senate Banking Committee hearing where the bill gets formally debated and amended, can now proceed and clears the way for the legislation to advance further in the Senate. Treasury and the CFTC would have a year after the bill becomes law to write the detailed rules around what crypto firms can and cannot do with yield products.
Meanwhile, Daniel Reis-Faria, CEO of ZeroStack, said in a note that bitcoin's range-bound trading reflects broader macro indecision rather than crypto-specific weakness.
Bitcoin staying below the $78,000 mark isn't really about crypto right now, it's about what's happening in the broader market. The Fed holding rates wasn't a surprise, but there is no clear direction on what comes next, and that's keeping investors from stepping in."The setup heading into next week is the same one that has held all month. Bitcoin needs a fresh catalyst to break decisively above $78,000, and the most likely sources, Fed clarity, ETF re-acceleration, or a Hormuz reopening, are all sitting outside the market's control.
Other majors were mixed. Ether held $2,310, XRP at $1.39, solana at $84.57, all close to flat on the week. Dogecoin was the standout, up nearly 10% on the week to $0.105 with futures open interest hitting a year-high earlier in the week.
The setup heading into next week is the same one that has held all month. Bitcoin needs a fresh catalyst to break decisively above $78,000, and the most likely sources, Fed clarity, ETF re-acceleration, or a Hormuz reopening, are all sitting outside the market's control.
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Despite muted prices to start the second quarter, the report said improving onchain metrics and network activity point to a market finding its footing.
Rather than focusing solely on prices, the report is framed through a broader lens of risk, positioning and cycle dynamics across bitcoin
BTC
$78,448.48
, ether (ETH) and solana (SO
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, continues to serve as the market’s primary source of resilience, with unrealized profit levels and dominance metrics indicating that capital remains concentrated in the most established and liquid asset during the consolidation phase.
BTC’s dominance continues to gradually increase after declining throughout the latter half of 2025," wrote analysts led by Daniel Gray.
The digital asset was trading around $77,000 at publication time.
Crypto markets have turned in a choppy performance in recent months, with bitcoin and other major tokens largely range-bound as investors navigate a complex macro backdrop.
Sticky inflation, shifting expectations around central bank rate cuts and periodic volatility in global equities have weighed on risk appetite, while ongoing regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. and abroad has added another layer of uncertainty.
At the same time, conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East and trade frictions between major economies have contributed to bouts of risk-off sentiment, limiting sustained upside across digital assets.
At the same time, the analysts noted that momentum and profitability indicators are consistent with a corrective period, one that may be laying the groundwork for a more stable market structure.
A notable divergence is emerging between price and network activity. The analysts pointed to sustained usage across Ethereum and Solana, suggesting that demand at the protocol level remains intact even as valuations lag.
Taken together, these signals reflect a market still in recovery, but with structural improvements underway that may not yet be fully reflected in prices, the report said.
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