Cryptocurrency News Live | Breaking Crypto News - Realtime Prices, Analysis, Predictions...

Minnesota Passes Crypto Kiosk Ban, One Governor's Signature Away From Becoming Law

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Live Newsroom) — Fri, 1 May 2026 13:00:00 -0700

Minnesota is one signature away from becoming the third state in the country to ban cryptocurrency kiosks, after the state legislature passed a bill targeting the ATM-like machines that law enforcement says have become magnets for fraud targeting elderly residents.

The Minnesota House passed SF 3868 by a lopsided 127-7 margin, sending it to Governor Tim Walz. The Senate had already approved it earlier. If Walz signs it, Minnesota joins Indiana and Tennessee as the only U.S. states to have outlawed crypto kiosks entirely.

Why Ban Them?

Crypto kiosks look and work a lot like ATMs. You walk up, put in cash, and the machine sends cryptocurrency to a wallet address. They're scattered across gas stations, convenience stores, and grocery stores - often in neighborhoods with older populations who may be less familiar with how crypto works.

That accessibility is the problem. Scammers use them as a near-untraceable cash-out mechanism. A fraudster will call a victim, impersonate a government agency, bank, or tech company, and direct them to deposit cash at a nearby kiosk. Because crypto transactions are irreversible and hard to trace, the money is effectively gone the moment it leaves.

The numbers in Minnesota are ugly. The state Department of Commerce reported an average loss of $6,700 per crypto kiosk scam complaint. Only 48% of victims recover any money at all - and when they do, the average refund is just 16% of what they lost. That means the typical victim who gets anything back sees less than $1,100 returned out of nearly $7,000 stolen.

Law Enforcement Led the Push

Minnesota police and prosecutors have been pushing for this ban for some time. Investigators say crypto kiosks make their jobs significantly harder - the transactions are fast, the counterparties are anonymous, and the funds cross chains before anyone can react. A traditional wire fraud case at least leaves records that can be subpoenaed. Crypto kiosks offer almost no friction for bad actors.

The 127-7 House vote reflects just how uncontroversial the bill became once legislators understood the scale of fraud. There were some concerns raised - critics argued that banning kiosks punishes the machines rather than the criminals, and that legitimate users who don't have bank accounts rely on them for financial access. But those arguments didn't pick up much traction when weighed against the documented harm to older and vulnerable residents.

Where This Fits in a Broader Regulatory Shift

The kiosk ban is part of a slow but real tightening of crypto regulation at the state level. Indiana passed a similar ban first. Tennessee followed. Now Minnesota. Other states are watching closely to see whether the political calculus makes sense for them.

There's a meaningful difference between this kind of regulation and broader federal crypto frameworks being debated in Washington. Kiosk bans are narrowly targeted - they don't touch exchanges, wallets, or the assets themselves. The argument for them is simple: these specific machines are being used primarily for fraud against some of the most vulnerable people in the country, and the cost-benefit math doesn't favor leaving them in place.

What Happens to the Machines?

If Walz signs the bill, kiosk operators would be required to shut down and remove machines from the state. There are currently several hundred crypto kiosks operating in Minnesota. The operators include both large national networks and smaller regional companies.

The industry has pushed back in other states, arguing that operators already have anti-fraud measures in place including transaction limits and fraud warnings, and that banning the machines doesn't stop the underlying scam calls. Those arguments haven't been enough to stop the legislative momentum. With a near-unanimous House vote and Senate approval already in hand, the odds of Walz refusing to sign look slim.

For crypto traders and investors, the kiosk ban has essentially no direct impact - nobody is running serious trading volume through a gas station machine. But as a signal of where state-level politics are moving on crypto consumer protection, Minnesota's lopsided vote is hard to ignore.

---------------

Author: Blake Taylor
New York News Desk

Chia's 'Green' Claims Collapse: Study Finds the Eco-Friendly Crypto Emits 18x More Carbon Than Advertised

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Live Newsroom) — Fri, 1 May 2026 07:30:00 -0700

Chia built its entire identity on being the clean alternative to Bitcoin. No energy-hungry mining rigs, no warehouse-sized data centers running around the clock - just unused hard drive space doing gentle, planet-friendly work. A new academic study says that story doesn't hold up.

Researchers found that Chia Network's actual carbon emissions are 18 times higher than the company's own claims, with real-world output measured at 0.88 million metric tons of CO2 per year. Chia Network, for its part, reportedly acknowledged the figure is "not far off."

The Promise Behind Chia

Chia was designed by BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen as a direct response to Bitcoin's notorious energy footprint. Instead of Proof of Work - where miners race to solve computationally expensive puzzles - Chia uses Proof of Space and Time (PoST). The idea is that you allocate unused storage capacity on hard drives, and the network uses that allocated space as a proxy for work done.

On paper, it sounds efficient. Hard drives consume a fraction of the power that GPUs and ASICs do. Chia leaned hard into this framing, positioning itself as a greener blockchain that could attract environmentally conscious investors and institutions wary of Bitcoin's climate footprint.

The problem, according to the researchers, is that the framing ignores a critical phase of how Chia actually works.

The Plotting Problem

Before a hard drive can participate in the Chia network, it has to be "plotted" - a process that fills the drive with cryptographic data and requires significant computation to execute. That initialization step is energy-intensive. The researchers, led by Soraya Djerrab, built an experimental testbed using Grid'5000 infrastructure to measure actual energy draw during plotting and combined that with theoretical modeling of the network's full operational and embodied emissions.

What they found: once you account for the energy burned during the plotting phase, plus the hardware manufacturing emissions from the drives themselves, Chia's total carbon footprint blows past its advertised numbers by a wide margin. The 0.88 MtCO2/year figure puts Chia well above most blockchains that market themselves as eco-friendly alternatives.

There's also a less obvious hardware issue. The intense write cycles during plotting dramatically shorten the lifespan of consumer solid-state drives. Early Chia farmers burned through drives at a rate that alarmed the storage industry and contributed to a global SSD shortage in 2021. The embodied carbon cost of manufacturing all those replacement drives adds to the real-world footprint in ways that aren't captured by measuring electricity consumption alone.

Chia Isn't Alone in This Problem

The broader issue the study points to is one that affects the entire "green crypto" category. Marketing claims about energy efficiency are almost universally based on narrow measurements - typically electricity consumed during steady-state operation of the network - that ignore manufacturing emissions, initialization costs, and the real-world hardware replacement cycles that validators and farmers run through.

Bitcoin critics make a similar argument about the mining industry's claims of renewable energy use. The numbers that get cited tend to be the ones that look best, not the ones that capture the full lifecycle impact.

What Chia Said

Chia Network hasn't formally disputed the study's findings. The company's acknowledgment that the 18x figure is "not far off" is a notable departure from the aggressive pushback crypto projects typically mount when their environmental claims get scrutinized. It's also a quiet admission that the gap between the company's public positioning and the measurable reality is substantial.

For investors who bought into Chia on the premise that it was a climate-responsible alternative to Bitcoin, that's a meaningful disclosure. The coin's price has struggled for years, and the environmental angle was one of the few genuine differentiators Chia could point to.

The study doesn't argue that Chia is somehow worse than Bitcoin overall - the absolute numbers are still far smaller given Bitcoin's scale. But it does make a straightforward case that the "green by design" label Chia built its brand around doesn't survive contact with a rigorous measurement framework.

If you're picking a blockchain because it's better for the planet, you probably want to see the methodology before you take the marketing at face value.

---------------

Author: Ryan Gardner
Silicon Valley News Desk

Wasabi Protocol Drained of $5 Million After Admin Key Compromise Spans Four Chains

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Live Newsroom) — Fri, 1 May 2026 05:21:00 -0700

Another day, another DeFi protocol drained. Wasabi Protocol, a perpetuals trading platform operating across Ethereum, Base, Berachain, and Blast, lost between $4.5 million and $5.5 million on April 30 after an attacker compromised the deployer admin key and used it to systematically empty vault contracts across all four chains.

The attack was fast and methodical. Once the attacker had the admin key, they called grantRole on Wasabi's permission contract to give themselves full admin privileges with zero delay - no timelock, no waiting period. From there, according to The Block, they upgraded the protocol's perp vaults and Long Pool to malicious implementations that simply drained the balances.

What Got Hit

On Ethereum, the affected contracts included Wasabi's wWETH, sUSDC, wBITCON, wPEPE, and Long Pool vaults. On Base, the attack hit sUSDC, wWETH, sBTC, sVIRTUAL, sAERO, and sBRETT vaults. Berachain and Blast exposure added to the total loss.

Security firm Blockaid flagged the exploit as it was happening, which at least gave some users time to react - but the nature of an admin key compromise means there's very little the protocol itself can do once that key is in hostile hands. The attacker controlled the upgrade mechanism. They rewrote the contracts.

The Security Failure Is Embarrassingly Basic

This one stings because it's so preventable. The root cause wasn't a novel zero-day, a complex re-entrancy bug, or a subtle edge case in a cryptographic primitive. It was a single externally-owned account holding full ADMIN_ROLE in Wasabi's PerpManager with no multisig requirement, no timelock, and no governance process protecting that access.

That's table-stakes security for any protocol managing real user funds. Requiring multiple keys to sign a privileged action - or imposing a 24 or 48-hour delay before an upgrade takes effect - would have stopped this attack entirely. A timelock alone would have given users and security researchers time to notice the malicious transaction queued up and respond before it executed.

Wasabi isn't the first protocol to skip these protections and pay for it. It won't be the last. But the regularity with which centralized admin keys get compromised in DeFi - and the regularity with which the post-mortem reveals no multisig or timelock was ever in place - is genuinely hard to explain at this point in the industry's development.

Context: The Worst Month on Record

The Wasabi exploit landed at the tail end of April 2026, which closed as the worst month for crypto hacks since tracking began. DeFiLlama confirmed 30 separate incidents in April with total losses above $625 million - roughly one attack per day. Two incidents dominated: the Drift Protocol social-engineering theft (approximately $285 million) and the KelpDAO LayerZero bridge exploit ($292 million), both attributed by researchers to North Korea's Lazarus Group.

Wasabi's $5 million loss looks modest next to those numbers, but it's a useful reminder that the attack surface isn't limited to massive bridge contracts and well-funded protocols. Smaller perpetuals platforms with real user deposits and a single unprotected admin key are just as vulnerable - and the economic incentive to target them is real.

What Users Should Know

Wasabi Protocol paused the affected vaults and has posted about the incident on social channels. Users with open positions or deposits in the affected contracts should verify their status directly through official Wasabi channels and be skeptical of any recovery offers that arrive via DM - the fake refund scam that follows exploits is almost as reliable as the exploits themselves.

The broader lesson from April 2026 is one the industry keeps relearning: it doesn't matter how good the trading interface is, how competitive the fees are, or how much TVL a protocol has accumulated. If the admin key can drain everything in one transaction with no guardrails, eventually someone will get that key. Build accordingly.

---------------

Author: Alan Ward
Seattle News Desk

Tron Founder Justin Sun is Suing Trump's Crypto Project, Alleging Hidden Trap in the Code Froze His $75 Million

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Live Newsroom) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:30:00 -0700

Tron's Founder Takes the Trump Family's Crypto Venture to Federal Court

Justin Sun, the billionaire founder of the Tron blockchain and one of the most polarizing figures in crypto, has filed a federal lawsuit against World Liberty Financial - the DeFi project backed by the Trump family - alleging fraud, breach of contract, and what he describes as a hidden "backdoor" built into the project's smart contracts.

The complaint, filed April 22 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses WLFI of using that alleged backdoor to freeze approximately 2.9 billion of Sun's unlocked WLFI tokens after he allegedly declined to keep investing - or to mint the project's USD1 stablecoin on WLFI's terms.

The Alleged Setup

Sun says he invested $45 million in WLFI in 2024, drawn in part by the Trump name and what he describes as representations about token rights and governance access. What he got instead, he alleges, was a rug pull by smart contract.

According to the suit, WLFI secretly installed a blacklisting function in its token contracts - a mechanism that could prevent specific wallets from trading their tokens. Sun alleges that once it became clear he was not going to deepen his investment or participate in USD1 promotion, that function was activated against him. At peak valuation, his frozen holdings were reportedly worth over $1 billion. After market declines and liquidity constraints, that figure has dropped to roughly $75 million - still not nothing.

WLFI co-founder Zach Witkoff pushed back immediately, calling the lawsuit "a desperate attempt to deflect attention" from Sun's own alleged misconduct, and stated that WLFI had acted to protect itself and its users. Neither side has offered a full public accounting of what Sun's alleged misconduct actually refers to.

This Could Get Worse for All Parties, Fast…

A few things make this lawsuit worth tracking closely.

First, it involves the Trump family's most prominent crypto project - one that has already collected hundreds of millions from investors including foreign nationals, drawing scrutiny from congressional Democrats over potential conflicts of interest. A federal fraud suit alleging hidden smart contract manipulation puts fresh legal pressure on a project that has largely avoided meaningful oversight.

Second, the alleged blacklisting function itself is significant. Smart contracts are supposed to be trustless and transparent by design. If WLFI did in fact install an undisclosed admin function that could freeze individual wallets post-launch, that cuts against the project's entire DeFi credibility - and potentially raises securities law questions about what exactly investors were being sold.

Third, Justin Sun is not a sympathetic plaintiff. He is under investigation by the SEC over separate allegations of market manipulation and illegal celebrity promotions - accusations he denies - and this lawsuit will inevitably be framed as two controversial figures fighting over money. But messy lawsuits can expose genuinely important information through discovery.

The crypto industry has spent years arguing that smart contracts represent a more trustworthy, transparent financial system. A case alleging that a major project secretly built in a kill switch - and used it - is exactly the kind of story that complicates that argument.

---------------

Author: Blake Taylor
New York News Desk

In a UK First, Regulators Raided Eight Illegal Crypto Trading Sites Across London

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Live Newsroom) — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 20:56:13 -0700

The UK's Financial Watchdog Just Conducted Its First Physical Crypto Crackdown

On April 22, officers from the UK Financial Conduct Authority, working alongside HM Revenue and Customs and the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit, raided eight premises across London suspected of running illegal peer-to-peer cryptocurrency trading operations. It was the first coordinated physical enforcement action the FCA has ever taken against the illegal crypto sector.

At each of the eight sites, officials issued cease-and-desist notices and gathered evidence now feeding into active criminal investigations. None of the sites operated with FCA registration. Under UK law, businesses facilitating crypto exchange services for others must be registered and must maintain anti-money laundering controls. None of these operations had either.

What These Sites Were Doing

The FCA's concern was not primarily that people were trading crypto - it's that unregistered P2P operations create a conduit for dirty money. Without AML checks, criminals can use informal exchange networks to move, layer, and withdraw illicit funds with minimal traceability.

Reporting from CoinDesk notes that the FCA has signaled a harder enforcement posture in recent months, ahead of a new regulatory licensing regime expected to open in September 2026 - with full compliance requirements kicking in by October 2027. That timeline gives legitimate operators a window to get registered. It gives illegitimate ones a shrinking runway before they become targets.

Consumers who traded through unregistered P2P services are in a bad position if anything goes wrong. There is no access to the Financial Ombudsman Service, no compensation scheme, and a real risk that funds they handled could be linked to criminal activity they had no idea about.

A Tightening Noose

The UK has taken its time getting here. Compared to the US - where the DOJ, SEC, CFTC, and FinCEN have been filing crypto enforcement actions for years - the FCA's physical raids represent a meaningful escalation in ground-level enforcement, not just regulatory letters and fines.

Currently no peer-to-peer crypto trading platform or individual is registered with the FCA. That is not because the market does not exist - it is because the FCA's registration process has been brutal. The regulator rejected or saw the withdrawal of roughly 90% of crypto business applications in its initial program, citing AML deficiencies as the primary concern. The informal market filled the gap left by those rejections.

What is different now is the visible willingness to act in the physical world. Cease-and-desist letters, evidence gathering, and open criminal investigations signal that operating informally in the UK crypto market carries real personal risk - not just regulatory paperwork.

For traders who have been using informal P2P networks for convenience or to sidestep exchange KYC requirements, this is probably a good time to reconsider. The FCA now knows these operations exist, knows where they operate, and has demonstrated it is willing to show up in person.

---------------

Author: Reginald Bailey
Europe News Desk

North Korean Hackers on a Crypto STEALING SPREE in 2026 - With $300+ MILLION Already Drained...

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Live Newsroom) — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 15:00:00 -0700

How North Korea Stole $292 Million From DeFi's Plumbing

DeFi had a rough week - and when I say rough, I mean "almost-existential-crisis" rough. On April 18, attackers later identified as North Korea's Lazarus Group exploited Kelp DAO's cross-chain bridge to drain 116,500 rsETH, worth approximately $292 million. Within 48 hours, the shockwave had erased more than $13 billion in total value locked across decentralized finance.

It is the largest DeFi exploit of 2026, and it exposed a vulnerability that the industry has been warned about for years.

What Actually Happened

The root of the exploit was embarrassingly simple in concept, even if technically sophisticated in execution. Kelp DAO's bridge relied on LayerZero for cross-chain messaging - but it was configured with a 1-of-1 verifier, meaning a single node was responsible for validating all cross-chain messages before funds could move.

Lazarus did not need to crack the verifier directly. Instead, the group compromised two remote procedure call (RPC) nodes that fed data to that verifier. With those nodes under their control, they injected fake cross-chain messages through LayerZero, tricking the bridge into releasing funds it never should have touched. according to CoinDesk, the stolen rsETH spread across more than 20 blockchain networks, making rapid containment nearly impossible.

The 1-of-1 setup is the critical failure point. A multi-validator configuration would have required the attacker to compromise multiple independent nodes simultaneously - a dramatically harder lift. Instead, a single point of failure collapsed under a well-funded nation-state hacking operation.

The Fallout: A Near-Death Experience for DeFi

Because rsETH served as collateral across protocols on multiple layer 2 networks, the damage did not stay contained to Kelp DAO. Aave, SparkLend, and Fluid moved quickly to freeze the asset, but not before the broader market reacted. Aave alone saw $8.45 billion in deposits exit over 48 hours.

The sector's total value locked dropped more than $13 billion in two days. Crypto.news reported that April 2026 is now the worst month for crypto hacks since the $1.4 billion Bybit breach in February 2025, with over $606 million lost across 18 days.

In a coordinated response, Aave founder Stani Kulechov joined forces with Lido Finance and EtherFi to propose covering the shortfall using ether reserves - an unusual display of cross-protocol cooperation that may have prevented a wider bad-debt cascade.

LayerZero has formally attributed the attack to TraderTraitor, the Lazarus sub-group responsible for some of the most lucrative crypto heists of recent years, including the Ronin Bridge exploit in 2022 and the Bybit exchange hack earlier this year.

What This Means for Bridge Security

If the Kelp DAO exploit proves anything, it's that crypto bridges remain the industry's most dangerous attack surface. Nearly every major protocol hack in recent memory has exploited the same basic problem: a cross-chain message that was trusted when it should not have been.

The fix is not complicated in theory. Multi-validator setups, decentralized RPC node networks, and independent security audits of bridge infrastructure would all raise the bar considerably. The challenge is that cutting corners on infrastructure often gets rationalized as a "move fast" decision - until a nation-state with unlimited patience decides to take advantage.

DeFi's recovery from this hack looks manageable. Aave's safety module held, protocols coordinated quickly, and no major platform appears to have collapsed. But the sector absorbed a $13 billion shock in 48 hours. The next bridge that runs a 1-of-1 verifier might not be so lucky.

---------------

Author: Ryan Gardner
Silicon Valley News Desk

Treasury Freezes $344 Million in USDT Tied to Iran's Central Bank in Record On-Chain Sanctions Action

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Live Newsroom) — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0700

The U.S. Treasury claimed its biggest on-chain trophy yet on Friday, announcing a freeze of roughly $344 million worth of Tether (USDT) sitting in two wallets that officials say belong to the Central Bank of Iran. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled the action as part of a broader pressure campaign Washington is calling "Economic Fury," aimed at choking off Tehran's access to dollar-denominated liquidity while the conflict in the Middle East drags on.

According to OFAC's announcement, the wallets are alleged to be linked to the IRGC's Quds Force and to Hezbollah, with Tether coordinating directly with U.S. law enforcement to immobilize the balances. Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs confirmed Friday that the action represents the largest single on-chain freeze of Iranian sovereign crypto reserves ever made public.

How a Stablecoin Freeze Actually Works

For anyone newer to the mechanics: USDT is centrally controlled by Tether, which means the issuer can blacklist any wallet at any moment, blocking it from sending or receiving tokens. Once an address is frozen, the assets technically still exist on-chain. The holder just cannot move them. It is the closest thing crypto has to a bank account being asset-frozen by court order, only faster and far cheaper to enforce.

That setup has long been a sore spot for stablecoin maximalists who argue it makes USDT functionally indistinguishable from traditional banking rails. Friday's announcement will only sharpen that debate. For sanctions hawks, it is proof the toolkit works. For privacy advocates, it is another reminder that "trustless" only goes so far when one company holds the kill switch.

Why Tether Played Ball

Tether, headquartered in El Salvador and long criticized for opaque reserves, has spent the past two years openly courting U.S. regulators and law enforcement. The company has frozen billions of dollars in USDT linked to alleged criminal activity and sanctions violations since 2023, and it now publishes regular cooperation reports. Friday's action looks like another step in that strategy: get ahead of regulation by becoming the model citizen of the stablecoin space.

It also helps explain why a senior Tether executive is reportedly on the speaker list for the Mar-a-Lago crypto gala this weekend. Public goodwill with the current administration appears to be a top corporate priority.

What It Means for the Market

Iran has, for years, used cryptocurrency to route around sanctions, both for state-level moves and for facilitating proxy financing. The IRGC and Hezbollah have been named repeatedly in U.S. enforcement actions tied to digital assets. A $344 million seizure does not bankrupt the regime, given that oil revenues dwarf this number, but it is a meaningful shot across the bow, and it signals that other state actors using stablecoins should expect similar treatment.

USDT itself barely budged on the news, hovering at its peg as it usually does during enforcement headlines. That is, in a way, the bigger story. The market has fully priced in the fact that Tether will burn balances when asked. There is no longer any pretense that holding USDT is a sovereign-grade hedge against Western financial pressure.

For Tehran, the message is unsubtle. For everyone else, it is a reminder that the rails crypto runs on are not as neutral as the marketing suggests. The age of stablecoin sovereignty was always more pitch deck than policy.

---------------

Author: Blake Taylor
New York News Desk

26 'FakeWallet' Apps Caught on Apple App Store Targeting MetaMask, Ledger, and Trust Wallet Seed Phrases

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Live Newsroom) — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 01:10:00 -0700

Apple's App Store, marketed for years as the safest place on the internet to download an app, just delivered a sharply embarrassing episode for crypto-curious users. Researchers say at least 26 fraudulent apps slipped through review and onto the storefront, every one of them dressed up to look like a legitimate cryptocurrency wallet.

The campaign, dubbed "FakeWallet" by the analysts who flagged it, allegedly impersonates major names including MetaMask, Ledger, Coinbase, Trust Wallet, TokenPocket, imToken and Bitpie. The icons mirror the originals closely enough to fool a quick glance, while names rely on subtle typos (think "LeddgerNew" or stretched spellings) to evade Apple's automated checks. Once installed, the apps either route victims to phishing pages or hook directly into the screen where users type their recovery phrases.

Why the Asia-Pacific Angle Matters

While the bait list reads global, several of the impersonated wallets, including Bitpie, imToken and TokenPocket, have especially deep user bases across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Security researchers first reported that mainland users were among the earliest targeted, and several variants were configured with Chinese-language phishing flows. That regional skew is not surprising. Self-custody adoption has been climbing fast across Asia, and many users get their wallets through the App Store rather than a desktop browser.

The targeting also underscores a longstanding gap in mobile wallet security culture. Hardware wallet vendors have spent years drilling into customers that seed phrases never go into a phone, ever. The reality is that millions of users do exactly that during onboarding, and a convincing fake interface is enough to drain a wallet in a single tap of "submit."

How the Scam Pulls Off the Theft

Two attack patterns have been observed. In the first, the malicious app launches and immediately redirects the user to a browser page styled to mimic the App Store, prompting them to install a second "real" wallet that is itself trojanized. In the second, the app loads what appears to be the legitimate wallet onboarding flow but inserts a fake verification step demanding the recovery phrase, which is then quietly exfiltrated to an attacker-controlled server.

Either way, the result is the same: the operators capture the master key and drain assets within minutes. Apple Insider reported earlier that one such app alone is alleged by independent researchers to have netted around $9.5 million before being removed. Apple has not confirmed any specific dollar figures.

What Apple Is, and Isn’t Doing

Apple has pulled most of the identified apps after disclosure. The company has not commented publicly on how the apps cleared review, nor on whether the same developer accounts have been blocked from publishing future updates. For users who installed any of the flagged apps, the only safe assumption is that the seed phrase entered into them is already compromised, and any funds tied to that phrase need to be moved to a new wallet immediately.

The broader picture is uglier than 26 takedowns. App-Store-led trust assumptions are wearing thin in the crypto space, and reviewers seem perpetually one move behind the people building these clones. Until that changes, the safest install path remains the one that crypto veterans have been preaching for a decade: download from the wallet provider's own website, verify the developer signature, and never type a seed phrase into anything that asked for it first.

---------------

Author: Seta Tsuruki
Asia Newsroom

Bitcoin's Recent Gains Cause Carnage for Short Sellers...

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Newsroom) — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 09:26:00 -0700

Bitcoin's gains have brought a lot of pain for those who were betting against it. Bitcoin's push back toward the high $70,000 range has looked impressive on screen, but the real story is the carnage underneath it - roughly $826 million in crypto liquidations in 24 hours, with short positions taking the worst of it and BTC accounting for the biggest share of the damage, according to CoinGlass data.

That matters because this was not just a casual bounce. Reports also pointed to a large BTC short liquidation around $15.75 million on Hyperliquid, which is the kind of forced unwind that can extend a move far beyond the original catalyst.

When BTC starts squeezing shorts this hard, traders usually get one of two outcomes - follow-through into a real trend or a fast mean-reversion once the forced buying dries up.

What to Watch For...

The key question now is whether spot demand can actually support price after the derivatives flush. One analysis noted that Bitcoin briefly pushed above $75,000, but weak spot buying capped the move, which is exactly the sort of detail that matters when the market is leaning on leverage rather than conviction. If spot buyers stay lazy, the market can give back gains just as quickly as it made them.

For traders, this is the kind of tape that rewards discipline more than heroics. Liquidations can create momentum, but they can also expose how thin the bid really is once the forced orders clear.

---------------

Author: Rowan Marrow
Seattle Newsroom

Goldman Sachs Jumps Into the Bitcoin ETF Game, Files for New Fund...

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Newsroom) — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 06:35:00 -0700

Goldman Sachs has filed for its first bitcoin ETF product, and the structure is more income-focused than maximalist-Bitcoin purist friendly. The proposed fund would buy bitcoin-linked exchange-traded products and sell call options on them, a setup meant to generate regular income while sacrificing some upside when BTC rips higher.

That matters because it signals another big traditional finance player is not just tolerating crypto exposure, but packaging it for clients who want something closer to yield than moonshot exposure. Reuters reported the filing on April 14, and the market's reaction was predictably split between "institutional adoption keeps widening" and "yes, finance will turn everything into an income product if given enough time."

The immediate trading relevance is straightforward. If large banks keep rolling out structured Bitcoin products, they may help expand demand from investors who want exposure but dislike direct ownership or wild volatility. That does not automatically boost spot BTC in a straight line, but it can deepen the market and normalize Bitcoin further inside mainstream portfolios.

It is also a subtle sign of where the market is in the adoption cycle. Goldman is not entering crypto because the story is new anymore - it is entering because the client demand has gotten too large to ignore. That is usually when Wall Street starts acting like it discovered the asset class five minutes ago.

---------------

Author: Dorian Fenwick
Silicon Valley Newsroom

Drift Protocol Hack Keeps Haunting Solana Traders...

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Newsroom) — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 06:00:00 -0700

The Drift Protocol exploit remains one of the most damaging crypto security stories of the year, with investigators and security firms describing a roughly $285 million attack tied to suspected North Korean actors. Chainalysis and Elliptic both said the incident was the result of a highly coordinated operation, and Elliptic said the on-chain behavior is consistent with DPRK-linked tactics.

Drift is a major Solana-based perpetuals venue, so the damage was never going to stay confined to one protocol. The hack reportedly wiped out more than half of Drift's total value locked and triggered a suspension of deposits and withdrawals while teams worked to contain the fallout.

For traders, the important part is not only the size of the theft, but what it says about confidence in DeFi plumbing. Large exploits tend to hit sentiment across the chain they live on, especially when the protocol sits near the center of liquidity, leverage, and active trading. Solana has plenty of supporters, but a $285 million hack is not the sort of headline anyone wants attached to a network trying to sell speed and scale.

The other reason this story still matters is that the laundering trail and recovery efforts can take weeks or months to resolve. That keeps the event alive in market memory longer than the original attack window, which is bad news for anyone hoping the ecosystem simply shrugs and moves on. Security risk is rarely a one-day event, no matter how much everyone wishes it were.

---------------

Author: Rowan Marrow
Seattle Newsroom

Tax Day in the USA - is Bitcoin in for a Sell Off?

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Newsroom) — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 03:19:00 -0700

Bitcoin is heading into the U.S. tax deadline with a familiar seasonal headache: traders who owe capital gains tax may need to sell crypto to raise cash, and this year the number being tossed around is as high as $2.8 billion. That estimate, cited in recent coverage, lands on a market already rattled by weak sentiment, geopolitical uncertainty, and thinning futures activity.

What makes this story worth watching is not just the size of the potential selling, but the timing. April 15 has a habit of turning into a market stress test, and this one arrives with Bitcoin already fighting to hold its recent recovery. If the forced selling wave is real, traders could get a clean read on how much demand is waiting underneath the market once the tax overhang clears.

Some analysts are framing the setup as a coiled spring, arguing that once the deadline passes, the market could see relief buying and redeployed capital. That may be true, but the near-term trade is still obvious: tax-day pressure first, optimism later, assuming Bitcoin behaves and does not decide to make the chart uglier out of sheer spite.

The bigger question is whether this year's tax pressure is a temporary drag or another reminder that crypto liquidity can get fragile fast when macro fear and calendar events line up. For traders, that is the part worth paying attention to, not the usual social-media theater around "sell in April" folklore.

---------------

Author: Cedric Holloway
New York Newsroom

North Korea Allegedly Drained $280 Million from Solana's Drift Protocol on April Fool's Day

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Newsroom) — Thu, 9 Apr 2026 13:00:00 -0700

Happy April Fool's Day... Your $280 Million Is Gone. Really.

On April 1st, the Solana-based DeFi platform Drift Protocol had $280 million drained from its accounts in what blockchain security firm Elliptic says bears all the hallmarks of a North Korean state-backed operation. The attack was no prank - and for Drift's users, it was about as far from funny as it gets.

What made this one technically notable was the attack vector. Rather than a straightforward exploit or the social engineering tricks North Korean hackers are known for, the alleged attackers abused a Solana feature called a durable nonce - a mechanism designed to prevent transaction timeouts. According to reporting by Fortune, the attacker used this mechanism to dupe Drift's Security Council into pre-approving transactions that wouldn't execute until weeks later - effectively planting a time bomb inside the protocol's own administrative layer.

Drift confirmed the incident in a post on X, describing how "a malicious actor gained unauthorized access to Drift Protocol through a novel attack involving durable nonces, resulting in a rapid takeover of Drift's Security Council administrative powers." The platform immediately suspended deposits and withdrawals for all users.

North Korea's Crypto Crime Streak Continues

Elliptic's attribution is consistent with a now well-established pattern. North Korea was responsible for roughly $2 billion in stolen crypto throughout 2025 - around 60% of all digital assets stolen globally that year, per blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. The country's most brazen job was the alleged $1.5 billion hack of crypto exchange Bybit in early 2025, still the largest single crypto theft on record.

North Korean hackers typically rely on social engineering - building fake identities, infiltrating teams, and manipulating insiders into handing over credentials. The Drift attack represents something different: a patient, technically sophisticated exploit that weaponized the platform's own security infrastructure against it. The attacker didn't break down the door. They convinced someone inside to leave it unlocked.

Who Is Drift?

Drift Protocol was founded in 2021 by Cindy Leow and David Lu. It offers perpetual futures and other trading products on Solana, and had accumulated over $400 million in total deposits before the attack. That figure is now considerably different. The platform has not yet provided a detailed public timeline for resuming normal operations.

The Drift hack is a reminder that DeFi's security model - which relies on multisig councils, on-chain governance, and community-held administrative keys - is only as strong as the humans and processes behind it. A durable nonce isn't a bug; it's a feature. But features can be weaponized, and North Korea's alleged hackers appear to have studied Solana's mechanics carefully enough to do exactly that.

For the broader Solana ecosystem, the timing couldn't be worse. The network has spent the better part of two years positioning itself as the institutional-grade DeFi layer of choice. A $280 million heist - allegedly handed to a regime under international sanctions - is not a great look, regardless of which chain the exploit ran on.

---------------

Author: Cedric Holloway
New York Newsroom

Wall Street's $12 TRILLION GIANT, Charles Schwab, Opening a Waitlist for Spot Bitcoin and Ethereum Trading...

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Newsroom) — Thu, 9 Apr 2026 02:27:00 -0700

Charles Schwab - the 55-year-old brokerage giant sitting on $12.22 trillion in client assets - has opened a waitlist for "Schwab Crypto," a new platform that will let clients buy and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum directly. No ETF wrapper, no futures contract, no middleman exchange. Just spot crypto, inside the same account where someone keeps their index funds and retirement savings.

The launch is expected in the first half of 2026, and according to TheStreet, it will be offered through Charles Schwab Premier Bank, SSB - putting it in direct competition with Coinbase and Robinhood from day one. For two platforms that have spent years cultivating the retail crypto market largely by default, this is the kind of competition that demands attention.

CEO Rick Wurster has been telegraphing this move for months. On a podcast published April 2nd, he laid out the logic plainly: roughly 5% of Schwab's clients already have crypto exposure, mostly through spot Bitcoin ETFs like IBIT and FBTC. But a meaningful chunk of that customer base is also holding spot crypto at Coinbase or Robinhood specifically because Schwab didn't offer it. "We'll have it in the next several months," Wurster said.

What Schwab's Clients Are Actually Getting

The fine print matters here. Schwab Crypto will not be available to clients in New York or Louisiana, or to any international accounts. It will be held through the Premier Bank platform and will sit outside the usual safety nets. It is not covered by SIPC protection, not FDIC-insured, and not classified as a security. Schwab is being transparent about this, but it does mean that clients used to the institutional backstops of a traditional brokerage are stepping into different territory the moment they buy their first satoshi.

Schwab is also not alone in making this move. Morgan Stanley expanded crypto access to all wealth management clients in 2025, with advisors encouraged to recommend allocations of up to 4%. Bank of America followed, opening crypto recommendations to wealth advisers from January 2026. Morgan Stanley has since filed for a dedicated national trust bank charter for digital assets, planning to offer custody, trading, swaps, and staking. The old-money institutions are no longer tiptoeing around this.

Crypto Will Be More Accessible than Ever to the 'Average Investor'

Schwab's entry into spot crypto isn't just a product launch - it's a signal about where the industry's center of gravity is shifting. When a firm with 12 trillion dollars under management builds a waitlist for Bitcoin and Ethereum trading, it reflects a client base that has already decided crypto belongs in a portfolio. Schwab is catching up to demand that has been there for a while.

For crypto natives, the irony is not lost that the same boomer-friendly brokerage that once seemed indifferent to digital assets is now racing to offer the same products as Coinbase. The difference is that Schwab brings with it decades of trust, an enormous existing client base, and distribution that no crypto-native exchange has ever come close to matching. When the waitlist opens into a live product, the impact on spot Bitcoin and Ethereum demand could be significant - and mostly quiet, routed through accounts that don't look like crypto at all.

---------------

Author: Rowan Marrow
Seattle Newsroom

Bitcoin Is the Only Market Open This Easter Weekend - and the Stakes Just Got Higher...

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Newsroom) — Sat, 4 Apr 2026 21:30:00 -0700

Most investors this Easter weekend have one option: watch and wait. Stock markets are closed. Bond markets are closed. But Bitcoin doesn't care about holidays, and neither does geopolitical risk.

While traditional markets pause for Good Friday and Easter Monday, Bitcoin is trading around the clock - exposed to everything happening in the world right now. That includes renewed tension with Iran, a fresh oil price spike, and a U.S. jobs report that came in hotter than expected, raising fresh questions about the Federal Reserve's path on interest rates.

What's Moving Markets This Weekend

Oil surged sharply after reports of escalating military activity near the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for global energy supply. Geopolitical risk in that region historically rattles financial markets - but those markets are closed until Monday. Bitcoin, by contrast, is open and reflecting those tensions in real time.

At the same time, Friday's U.S. jobs report showed the labor market is still running hotter than the Fed would like. That's bad news for anyone hoping for quick rate cuts. Higher rates tend to weigh on risk assets, and Bitcoin has shown sensitivity to Fed signals throughout 2024 and into 2025. Crypto traders are watching that data closely, even over a holiday weekend.

According to analysts at CryptoSlate, Bitcoin's role as the only major liquid asset this weekend makes it a pressure gauge for everything building up in traditional finance right now.

Safe Haven? or Risk Asset? Both...

One of the ongoing debates in crypto is whether Bitcoin is a safe haven like gold or a risk asset like tech stocks. In practice, it often behaves like whichever the market needs at a given moment - and this weekend, that's genuinely unclear.

In some scenarios, investors could rotate into Bitcoin as the only liquid store of value available while everything else is locked. In others, broad risk-off sentiment could push prices down as traders reduce exposure across the board. What makes this weekend unusual is that Bitcoin is the only asset that will actually reflect either of those moves while it's happening.

Gold, which would normally absorb some of the safe-haven demand, is also closed for the holiday. That puts Bitcoin in an unusual position: it's the only major asset that's liquid, responsive, and tradeable right now.

The Main Things Traders Should Be Watching...

Weekend trading in Bitcoin generally sees lower volume, which means price moves can be exaggerated in either direction. A moderate amount of selling pressure can push prices down further than it would on a normal Tuesday. The same is true on the upside. Thin order books amplify volatility.

If the Iran situation escalates further over the weekend, or if additional economic data comes in that reshapes rate expectations, Bitcoin will be the only market reflecting that in real time. When stock markets open Monday, they'll be pricing in everything that happened while they were closed - and Bitcoin traders will have had a two-day head start.

The world doesn't take holidays. Neither does Bitcoin. This Easter weekend, that distinction matters more than usual. Traders who are paying attention will have information that the rest of the market won't fully process until markets open again.

-------
Author: Mark Pippen
London Newsroom
GlobalCryptoPress | Breaking Crypto News

Coinbase Just Got a Federal Bank Charter - And It Changes Everything for Institutional Crypto

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Newsroom) — Sat, 4 Apr 2026 18:30:00 -0700

Coinbase Just Got a Federal Bank Charter - Here's Why That's a Much Bigger Deal Than It Sounds

Coinbase has received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a national trust bank charter - a move that fundamentally changes what the largest US crypto exchange is allowed to do, and how it competes in the institutional market going forward.

The approval was confirmed Thursday, and while "conditional approval" sounds like bureaucratic hedging, it's actually a very meaningful step. The charter gives Coinbase the ability to operate under a single federal regulatory framework rather than navigating a patchwork of 50 different state licenses. For a company that has spent years playing regulatory whack-a-mole, that's a significant operational upgrade.

One thing worth clarifying upfront: Coinbase is not becoming a bank in the traditional sense. It explicitly said it will not take retail deposits or engage in lending. This is a trust charter - focused on custody and payment services - not a commercial banking license. That distinction matters, because it means Coinbase avoids the risks that come with fractional reserve banking while still locking in the federal legitimacy that institutional clients increasingly demand.

This Matters to Institutional Crypto Investors

The trust charter builds on groundwork Coinbase laid years ago. Its custody arm gained recognition as a qualified custodian under New York's Department of Financial Services back in 2018, which helped it win early institutional business. The OCC approval takes that one step further - nationwide, and under a federal standard that institutional investors and regulators in other jurisdictions recognize more readily than state-by-state approvals.

For institutional clients - think pension funds, asset managers, sovereign wealth funds - the question of custody is often the last barrier between "we're curious about crypto" and "we're actually allocating." Having a federally chartered custodian in Coinbase removes one more piece of friction from that conversation.

The approval also aligns with developments around the GENIUS Act, which grants the OCC oversight authority for stablecoin issuers operating as national trust banks. Coinbase already has a close relationship with Circle, the issuer of USDC, and the charter positions the exchange to expand into stablecoin-adjacent payment services under a framework regulators are actively building out.

Coinbase Is Not Alone - This Is Part of a Bigger Shift

Other major crypto players have been moving in the same direction. Anchorage Digital was the first federally chartered digital asset bank. Ripple, BitGo, and Paxos have all received similar approvals at various stages. Kraken recently gained access to Federal Reserve payment infrastructure through a master account. The trend is clear: the era of crypto operating entirely outside the traditional financial system is over, and the firms that build regulatory credibility now are positioning themselves to dominate the next phase of institutional adoption.

Not everyone is pleased. The Independent Community Bankers of America and the Bank Policy Institute have pushed back, arguing that extending bank-like privileges to crypto firms blurs regulatory lines and could introduce systemic risks. Senator Elizabeth Warren and other critics have raised concerns about conflicts of interest. Their worries aren't entirely without merit - crypto firms entering regulated banking territory creates novel oversight challenges - but the momentum is clearly moving in one direction.

In Closing...

For traders and investors watching Coinbase stock, the charter is a positive signal. It represents regulatory clarity - the thing the market has been asking for since crypto first started colliding with the traditional financial world. The path to institutional adoption just got a little less bumpy, Coinbase's competitive moat against smaller, less-regulated competitors just got a little deeper, and its ability to offer custody at scale under a recognized federal standard opens doors that were previously hard to reach.

The conditional piece means there are still steps to complete before the charter is fully active, and banks will continue to argue that the line between "trust company" and "bank" is being stretched. But the direction of travel is set. Crypto is moving into the financial mainstream, the regulators are building the on-ramps, and Coinbase just secured one of the better spots near the entrance.

-------------------
Author: Oliver Redding
Seattle Newsdesk / Breaking Crypto News

Trump's New Pro-Crypto 'Acting AG' Holds Up to $485K in Digital Assets...

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Newsroom) — Sat, 4 Apr 2026 16:35:00 -0700

Todd Blanche, the man who as deputy attorney general drafted the Justice Department's memo scaling back federal crypto enforcement, is now running the DOJ as interim attorney general. President Trump made the appointment after Pam Bondi's departure, and the crypto industry is paying close attention to what happens next.

Blanche is not a random pick. Before joining the Trump administration, he was Trump's personal defense attorney. His rise from deputy AG to acting AG at this particular moment - with crypto regulation still evolving and major cases still in play - makes this appointment more than just a routine reshuffle.

The Memo That Changed Things

Earlier in his tenure as deputy AG, Blanche sent a memo to federal prosecutors that directed them to back away from cases centered on regulatory disagreements in the crypto space. The basic message: don't waste resources on cases where a company is disputing how a law applies to it. Focus on actual fraud, actual theft, actual harm. Leave the regulatory gray-zone fights to the agencies whose job that is.

The practical effects showed up quickly. The case against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm saw certain charges dropped, then later reinstated - a signal of how messy the transition has been. More broadly, crypto companies accused of securities violations found a DOJ less eager to pile on while SEC cases were already in motion.

For the industry, this shift was welcome. For oversight advocates, it was alarming. The debate over where the line sits between "regulatory dispute" and "actual crime" in the crypto space is not a clean one, and Blanche's memo pushed that line in a direction favorable to the industry.

The Ethics Questions Aren't Going Away

What complicates Blanche's new role is his personal financial position. According to a ProPublica investigation, Blanche held between $159,000 and $485,000 in digital assets around the time he sent that enforcement memo. His holdings reportedly included Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, several smaller altcoins, and equity in Coinbase - the same Coinbase that just received a major federal bank charter.

Blanche has said he transferred these assets to family members, but questions remain about the timing of that transfer relative to when he was making decisions that affected the crypto industry. Federal ethics rules require officials to recuse themselves from matters that affect their financial interests, or to divest before taking those decisions. Whether Blanche's alleged actions satisfied those requirements is still being scrutinized by oversight bodies.

The optics are genuinely awkward. The man now running the Justice Department wrote a policy that benefited an industry he was personally invested in, and is now in an even more powerful position to shape how that policy plays out.

What I'm Watching..

The short-term read is probably positive. A DOJ led by someone with a demonstrated preference for pulling back from aggressive crypto enforcement means less immediate threat of headline-driven enforcement actions. Institutional investors who have been sitting on the sidelines partly because of legal uncertainty may see the environment as incrementally safer.

The longer-term read is more complicated. An enforcement environment that leans heavily on the industry to self-regulate is only as good as the industry's willingness to self-regulate. It also creates policy uncertainty - Blanche's position is "interim," meaning a Senate-confirmed replacement eventually takes over, and that person may bring a completely different philosophy.

The US government's relationship with crypto is clearly in a period of active reconfiguration. Blanche's appointment is one more data point in that process - meaningful, consequential, and still far from settled.

-------------------------
Author: Jules Laurent
Euro Newsroom | Breaking Crypto News

Trump's Labor Department Just Opened 401(k)s to Crypto - Here's What It Means for Your Retirement

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Newsroom) — Sat, 4 Apr 2026 02:00:00 -0700

The Trump administration's Labor Department just dropped a proposed rule that could fundamentally change how Americans invest for retirement - and cryptocurrency is front and center.

WHAT THE RULE ACTUALLY SAYS

On Monday, March 30, 2026, the Department of Labor published a proposed rule that would allow 401(k) plans to more easily include "alternative assets" - a broad category covering cryptocurrency, real estate, private equity, and private credit. This move comes directly in response to President Donald Trump's executive order from August 2025, which directed the Labor Department and the SEC to facilitate expanded access to these nontraditional investments in retirement accounts.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer framed it this way: the rule is meant to show how retirement plans "can consider products that better reflect the investment landscape as it exists today." The core mechanism the rule creates is a so-called "safe harbor" - a legal framework designed to shield plan administrators and employers from lawsuits if they choose to include alternative assets in their 401(k) offerings.

The proposed rule identifies six specific factors that a plan fiduciary must "objectively, thoroughly, and analytically consider" before selecting any alternative investment: performance history, fees, liquidity, valuation methodology, performance benchmarks, and complexity. The rule is now subject to a 60-day public comment period before it can be finalized.

WHY FEAR OF LAWSUITS HAD KEPT CRYPTO OUT OF 401(K)S

Here's something important to understand: 401(k) plans were never explicitly prohibited from including crypto or other alternative assets. The real barrier was always the threat of litigation. Plan sponsors - the employers who manage these accounts - feared being sued for breaching their fiduciary duty if volatile crypto investments lost value.

That fear intensified under the Biden administration, which issued guidance urging employers to exercise "extreme care" before making cryptocurrency available to retirement savers - citing "serious concerns" about the prudence of exposing retirement savings to crypto given its risk of fraud, theft, and loss. The Trump DOL rescinded that cautionary guidance back in May 2025, and this new proposed rule is the next step: actively creating a legal framework to make it easier for plan sponsors to say yes.

DON'T EXPECT YOUR 401(K) TO OFFER BITCOIN DIRECTLY ANYTIME SOON

Even legal experts are tempering expectations. This proposed rule does not change the fundamental restrictions on how alternative investments can actually be offered inside a 401(k). Investors would still only be able to get limited exposure through vehicles like target-date funds - they won't suddenly find a standalone Bitcoin fund sitting in their plan menu.

There are several layers of practical obstacles that remain. Alternative asset funds are inherently illiquid - they weren't structured to easily handle the constant in-and-out withdrawals typical of 401(k) plans. Additionally, existing 401(k) "nondiscrimination" rules require that any benefit available to higher-earning employees also be accessible to lower earners - which can create real complications with alt funds that require "accredited investor" status. As attorney Andrew Oringer of The Wagner Law Group put it, to truly unlock this space, you'd likely also need action from the SEC and possibly even Congress.

THE SKEPTICS HAVE A POINT

Financial advisors pushing back on this rule aren't just being overly cautious. Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, has been direct about it: the average 401(k) investor simply does not need alternative assets. A broad-market index fund consistently outperforms most actively managed and alternative strategies, keeps costs low, and doesn't require sophisticated analysis to evaluate. More importantly, the typical retirement saver won't have access to the best-performing alternative fund managers - those relationships go to sovereign wealth funds and large institutional investors, not individual 401(k) accounts.

Policy analysts at TD Cowen are also skeptical the rule will move quickly. They note that fiduciaries will likely wait for courts to confirm that the safe harbor language actually protects them from litigation before taking action - which means "it could be several years before we see the real impact from this proposal," according to analyst Jaret Seiberg.

THE BIGGER PICTURE: A CONSISTENT CRYPTO-FRIENDLY POLICY DIRECTION

This proposed rule fits neatly into a broader pattern of Trump-era policy aimed at opening mainstream financial infrastructure to crypto and alternative investments. The administration has already rolled back multiple Biden-era restrictions on digital assets across various regulatory bodies, and this move extends that philosophy directly into America's retirement savings system - an enormous pool of capital currently valued at over $10 trillion.

For crypto enthusiasts, the long-term potential here is real: if even a fraction of 401(k) assets begin flowing into digital asset exposure - even through indirect vehicles like target-date funds with crypto allocations - the capital inflows would be significant. For retirement savers, however, the lesson is the same as always: understand what you're investing in, how much it costs, and how it fits your actual risk tolerance and timeline. This rule removes a legal barrier - it doesn't remove the need for careful thought.

-------------------
Author: Oliver Redding
Seattle Newsdesk / Breaking Crypto News

Google Researchers Say a Quantum Computer Could Crack Bitcoin Keys in JUST 9 Minutes...

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Newsroom) — Fri, 3 Apr 2026 16:40:00 -0700

Google's quantum computing team just dropped a paper that the crypto world has been dreading for years, and the headline number is hard to ignore: a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could, in theory, crack a live Bitcoin transaction in roughly nine minutes.

The research, published on March 30, estimates that breaking the 256-bit elliptic curve cryptography (ECDLP-256) that protects Bitcoin wallets would require fewer than 500,000 physical qubits - about 20 times fewer than previous estimates. That's a significant downward revision, and it changes the timeline for when this threat becomes a real concern.

How the Attack Would Actually Work

Bitcoin's encryption protects wallets by keeping private keys hidden from public keys. Under normal conditions, no known classical computer can reverse-engineer a private key from a public key in any realistic timeframe. Quantum computers operating with Shor's algorithm, however, can crack elliptic curve cryptography much faster.

The specific attack described in the paper targets real-time transactions rather than old dormant wallets. When a Bitcoin transaction is broadcast to the network, the sender's public key is briefly exposed for roughly 10 minutes before the transaction confirms. The paper estimates that a quantum attacker who has pre-computed the necessary setup steps could exploit that window with about a 41% chance of success in under nine minutes.

That's not a guaranteed crack - it's a probabilistic attack during a narrow exposure window. But 41% odds with a nine-minute timer is a very different threat profile than what most people have been planning around.

Who's Most at Risk

Approximately 6.9 million Bitcoin are already considered vulnerable to a longer, slower quantum attack - including roughly 1.7 million coins from the Satoshi era. These older wallets reuse addresses or have exposed public keys, which means there's no time-pressure window needed; a quantum computer would just need enough qubits and time.

Ironically, Bitcoin's Taproot upgrade - introduced in 2021 to improve privacy and efficiency - may have made things worse. By exposing public keys by default in certain transaction types, Taproot expanded the pool of wallets exposed to real-time quantum attacks. That wasn't the intent, but it's now a documented risk in Google's own research.

Ethereum is actually less exposed to the nine-minute attack because ETH transactions confirm much faster, leaving a shorter window for a quantum attacker to work within.

Where Things Actually Stand

Here's the important context: this threat is not imminent. No quantum computer today comes close to 500,000 useful physical qubits with the error correction needed to run Shor's algorithm against live Bitcoin transactions. Google's own Willow chip, the most advanced publicly known quantum processor, operates at a far smaller scale than what the paper describes as necessary.

Google has been working on post-quantum cryptography (PQC) migration since 2016 and set a 2029 target for completing its own migration. The research was conducted using zero-knowledge methods specifically to avoid providing a usable attack recipe to bad actors.

The Bitcoin community has been aware of quantum risk for years, and several post-quantum signature schemes exist that could, in principle, replace the current ECDSA standard. What this paper does is sharpen the urgency. The qubit requirement is now lower than expected, the timeline may be tighter than people assumed, and the Taproot complication is newly documented.

Whether the ecosystem moves fast enough to address this before a capable quantum computer exists is the real open question - and right now, the answer is unclear.

-------
Author: Adam Lee
Asia News Desk / Breaking Crypto News

Stablecoins Are Sneaking Into the Mainstream'- Visa Is Betting The Trend Continues...

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Silicon Valley Newsroom) — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:35:00 -0700

Visa’s crypto chief said the company is still betting on stablecoin settlements and sees volumes growing, which is one of those stories that sounds tame until you realize a global payments giant is treating stablecoins like real infrastructure. That is a much bigger deal than it looks at first glance because it means the industry is moving from “can this work?” to “how much can we use this?”

Stablecoins are easy to ignore if you only watch price action. They do not make for dramatic candles, they do not dominate social feeds, and they rarely get the same attention as whatever coin is trending that day. But they are the plumbing. They move money between exchanges, support trading, and increasingly act as a settlement layer that can cut friction out of the payment process.

Why Visa Matters...

Visa matters because it is not some random startup trying to convince the market that blockchain will fix everything if everyone just believes hard enough. It is already a core part of global payments, which means its interest in stablecoins is a signal that the technology is moving closer to everyday financial use.

That does not mean Visa is about to replace the card network with a stablecoin meme and call it a day. What it means is more practical: stablecoins may become part of the background infrastructure that helps money move faster and more cheaply across borders and systems. If that happens, the winners are not just crypto exchanges. The winners are the companies that can plug stablecoins into real payment rails without making the whole process messy.

Why This Is More Than A Crypto Story...

Stablecoins matter because they sit at the overlap of crypto speculation and traditional finance utility. Traders use them as cash, but businesses may eventually use them as settlement tools, treasury tools, or transfer tools. That is why every serious stablecoin development should be read as a payments story as much as a crypto story.

Reuters has already flagged Tether as crypto’s fragile foundation, which is another reason the stablecoin category keeps drawing attention. The market depends on these assets to stay liquid, but the real test is whether they can also stay trusted enough to support broader use outside crypto-native venues. Visa leaning in suggests that answer is getting closer to yes, even if the road is still messy.

What Traders Should Watch...

For traders, the useful angle is not just whether stablecoins get adopted, but which ones and through which channels. A payment giant’s support can strengthen the legitimacy of the whole category, but it can also shift attention toward the stablecoins and networks that are easiest to integrate at scale. That creates winners, losers, and a lot of fine print.

It also means stablecoin headlines are no longer background noise. They can affect exchange flows, payment adoption, and the long-term shape of market infrastructure. If you are trying to understand where crypto is going next, this is one of the cleaner signals on the board: less hype, more utility, and a lot more money movement behind the scenes.

The takeaway is straightforward. Visa pushing stablecoins into settlement is not flashy, but it is the kind of quiet move that can matter a lot more than the loudest chart on the screen.

-------
Author: Mark Pippen
London Newsroom
GlobalCryptoPress | Breaking Crypto News

Crypto Firms Are Cutting Hundreds of Jobs — and Blaming AI

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Newsroom) — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 03:30:00 -0700

A wave of layoffs is sweeping through the crypto industry, and company executives are increasingly pointing to artificial intelligence as the reason. In the past two weeks alone, Gemini, Crypto.com, Algorand, Block, and several other firms have cut a combined total of roughly 450 jobs. The messaging from leadership has been remarkably consistent: AI can now do the work that used to require large teams.

Gemini, the exchange founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, cut 10% of its workforce, citing AI-driven productivity gains. Crypto.com followed with a round of layoffs affecting an undisclosed number of employees, with CEO Kris Marszalek explicitly stating that AI tools have made the company more efficient. Algorand, the blockchain network, cut 30% of its staff. Block, the payments company founded by Jack Dorsey, let go of 931 employees, citing AI as a core reason for restructuring.

The AI explanation has a certain logic to it. Large language models and AI coding assistants have genuinely made software development, customer support, and data analysis more efficient. A team that once required 50 engineers might now operate effectively with 35. But critics are not buying the narrative wholesale. They point out that crypto markets have been under sustained pressure, with Bitcoin still far below its all-time highs and trading volumes down significantly from the peak of the last bull cycle. In their view, the AI framing is a convenient cover for a more straightforward market-driven downsizing.

This is not the first time the crypto industry has gone through a painful contraction.

The 2022 bear market, triggered by the collapse of the Terra/Luna ecosystem and the subsequent FTX implosion, resulted in tens of thousands of layoffs across the industry. At the time, companies cited market conditions directly. This time, the language has shifted, but the underlying pattern is familiar.

What makes this cycle different is the genuine possibility that AI is, in fact, changing the math on headcount. If AI tools allow companies to operate leaner, then the layoffs may not reverse even when markets recover. That would represent a structural shift in the industry's employment model, not just a cyclical correction.

For workers in the space, the distinction matters enormously. A cyclical downturn means jobs come back when prices rise. A structural shift means the industry may never return to its previous headcount levels, regardless of what Bitcoin does. The honest answer is probably that both forces are at work simultaneously, and separating them is nearly impossible from the outside.

The crypto industry is not alone in this dynamic. Technology companies across the board have been using AI as a justification for workforce reductions. Whether that framing is accurate or convenient, it is becoming the dominant narrative for 2026 layoffs.

--------------
Rowan Marrow
Seattle Newsroom / Breaking Crypto News

SEC and CFTC Drop the Biggest Crypto Rulebook in Years...

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Newsroom) — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 16:00:00 -0700

The entire crypto landscape just got a massive regulatory upgrade. On March 17, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued new joint guidance that creates a formalized taxonomy for how regulators will treat crypto assets going forward. The guidance takes effect Monday, March 23, and it changes a lot.

The new framework sorts digital assets into five distinct buckets: digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools, stablecoins, and digital securities. This classification scheme is a game-changer, as it finally provides the legal clarity the industry has been demanding for over a decade.

Sixteen assets were specifically named as digital commodities...

Including Ethereum, XRP, Solana, Cardano, Chainlink, Bitcoin, and Dogecoin. For Bitcoin, this is business as usual, but for the others, the designation officially removes the lingering threat of being classified as unregistered securities. According to the SEC, a digital commodity derives its value from a blockchain network and supply and demand, not from the managerial work of a central team. If a coin's value depends on its network's programmatic functioning rather than a team promising returns, it's a commodity, not a security. That distinction matters enormously because securities are subject to a much stricter set of rules.

For investors who stake their proof-of-stake coins to validate transactions and earn a yield, the new guidelines deliver excellent news. The SEC now treats staking as an "administrative" action rather than a securities transaction. This covers solo staking, delegated staking, custodial staking, and liquid staking, giving financial institutions the green light to generate yield from staking native tokens on chains like Ethereum and Solana. There are still limits - staking providers can't advertise guaranteed returns or use deposited assets for speculation - but the broad permission to stake is a major win.

The new "digital securities" designation is also a massive de-risking event for the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market. If something was considered a security before being tokenized on a blockchain, it remains a security after. That sounds restrictive, but it's actually the opposite - asset managers can now proceed to tokenize stocks and bonds knowing exactly which rules apply. This is extremely bullish for blockchains like Ethereum, XRP, and Solana, which host large quantities of tokenized securities. With the regulatory fog lifted, institutional adoption has a clear path forward.

-----------------
Cedric Holloway
New York Newsroom / Breaking Crypto News

Middle East Uncertainty Just Wiped Out Bitcoin's Entire Weekly Gain...

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Newsroom) — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:37:00 -0700

Bitcoin gave back last week's gains over a single weekend, sliding to $68,700 after U.S. President Donald Trump issued a 48-hour ultimatum to Iran. The threat to attack Iranian power plants unless the Strait of Hormuz is reopened sent a jolt through a market that had spent the previous week building confidence around de-escalation.

The sudden shift in rhetoric triggered a massive liquidation event. Over the past 24 hours, $299 million in total liquidations hit the crypto markets. The damage was heavily skewed toward those betting on prices going up, with long liquidations accounting for roughly 85% of the total. Bitcoin longs took $122 million in damage, while Ether longs lost $95.7 million. The largest single liquidation was a $10 million BTC-USDT swap on OKX.

The broader crypto market fell in lockstep with Bitcoin. Ether dropped to $2,114, XRP lost ground to $1.41, and Solana fell to $88.55. The steep drop highlights how one-sided market positioning had become heading into the weekend, leaving traders vulnerable to a headline shock. Eight consecutive days of gains had built up a heavily bullish book, and one Truth Social post undid all of it.

Experts are pointing to the potential for a prolonged conflict in the Middle East as a major headwind for crypto. Any disruption to global trade routes increases uncertainty across financial markets, and Bitcoin remains highly correlated with risk assets like U.S. stock indices. The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed to most commercial traffic, with roughly 20% of the world's oil and gas flows still disrupted. Rising oil prices could also spark inflationary forces, adding pressure to an already tense economic environment.

Times Have Changed...

Bitcoin used to behave like it was in its own world, and what global markets were doing at any given moment didn't really matter, as there were no signs whatever concerned them mattered Bitcoin traders. Those days are long gone. reacting like most other investments over the past couple weeks has made it hard to argue that it still serves as a hedge against inflation and geopolitical turmoil. The crypto asset has yet to prove its merits as an independent safe haven, reacting more to global liquidity conditions and movements in traditional financial markets. The Fed's dovish lean from its Wednesday rate hold, which should have supported risk assets, has been completely overshadowed by war headlines.

The 48-hour window means the deadline arrives Monday evening. If Iran doesn't comply, and there's no indication it will, the market faces the prospect of strikes on power infrastructure, which would be the first direct targeting of civilian energy systems in the conflict. Traders are now holding back from making large directional bets, waiting to see how the situation unfolds.

Geopolitical shocks often create short-term panic, but they also clear out over-leveraged positions. The market just got a hard reset, and the real test will be how it reacts when the 48-hour deadline hits.

---
Cedric Holloway
Global Crypto Press / New York Newsroom

SEC Officially Removes Crypto from its List of Primary Targets...

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Silicon Valley Newsroom) — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 04:00:00 -0700

For the first time in years, the SEC’s official priorities list doesn’t treat crypto like its own separate fire to put out. In the agency’s 2026 exam and enforcement roadmap, digital assets are no longer called out as a standalone “special focus” area, and that small wording change says a lot about where the mood in DC has drifted.

This doesn’t mean enforcement is over. Existing lawsuits, token cases, and exchange investigations still move forward, and the SEC hasn’t suddenly decided every token is fine. What has changed is the optics: crypto risk is now folded into broader categories like market integrity, conflicts of interest, and retail protection instead of being highlighted as a dedicated threat silo on its own page.

The timing isn't random - Washington is in the middle of trying to build a more coherent framework that splits responsibility between the SEC, CFTC, banking regulators, and whatever Congress finally passes. Pulling crypto off the front of the hit list looks like an attempt to cool the temperature while those bigger structural decisions get hammered out.

For the industry, the move feels like an unofficial pivot from “Operation Choke Point, but make it blockchains” to something closer to normalization. If you are a US exchange, broker, or stablecoin issuer, you’re still dealing with lawyers and audits - but you are no longer starring in the agency’s annual villain montage. That alone changes how banks, venture funds, and public companies talk about touching this stuff.

The other side of the coin is that a lower-profile SEC doesn’t guarantee friendlier rules. If Congress actually passes comprehensive crypto legislation and the CFTC leans in harder on spot markets and derivatives, the net level of oversight could stay the same or even rise. The difference is that it would be happening inside a clearer playbook instead of via one-off press releases and surprise lawsuits.

Crypto dropping off the SEC’s 2026 priority headline doesn’t necessary end the crackdown, but it’s a clear signal that Washington is shifting from “kill it with fire” toward “file it under normal finance,” and markets are treating that as permission to exhale - at least a little.

-------------
- Miles Monroe
Washington DC Newsroom
GlobalCryptoPress.com

Why Commodity Traders are Rushing to CRYPTO Exchanges to Play the Oil Market...

Publishing@GlobalCryptoPress.com (Silicon Valley Newsroom) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 10:32:00 -0700

While traditional traders wait for CME to open, crypto is already YOLOing crude. Around-the-clock oil perpetual futures are quickly becoming one of the hottest new trades on crypto exchanges, turning West Texas Intermediate into just another thing you can lever up on from your phone.

On platforms like Hyperliquid, a perpetual contract tied to a barrel of WTI trades 24/7 and behaves like any other degen perp: no expiry, floating funding rate, and margin in crypto or stablecoins. In the last week, that single oil contract has clocked well over a billion dollars in daily volume, briefly becoming the second most traded market on the exchange after Bitcoin as prices spiked on Middle East headlines.

The pitch is obvious. Instead of opening a brokerage account, wiring dollars, and learning how roll dates work, retail traders can tap the same volatility global energy desks care about with one click. Position sizes are smaller, the UX is familiar to anyone who has traded BTC perps, and there is no such thing as “market closed” when OPEC surprises the world on a Sunday.

The risk is obvious too - oil is already one of the most macro-sensitive assets on earth, and now you can hit it with high leverage on an exchange that settles in minutes, not days. If you pair that with the usual perp dynamics - funding rate whipsaws, thin liquidity during news spikes, and auto-liquidations- you end up with a product that can wipe out newcomers even faster than Bitcoin did in 2021.

For regulators and traditional commodity desks, the rise of oil perps on crypto rails is a little unnerving. You’ve suddenly got a growing pool of cross-border, lightly regulated leverage riding on a benchmark that touches everything from airline tickets to food prices. Even if these contracts are small next to CME volumes, the feedback loop between “crypto oil” and real-world sentiment is getting tighter.

Oil perps are turning one of the most important commodities in the world into a weekend playground for crypto traders, and as volumes grow, it’s going to be harder for regulators and old-school energy desks to pretend this corner of the market doesn’t matter.

-------
Author: Mark Pippen
London Newsroom
GlobalCryptoPress | Breaking