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The New York Stock Exchange-listed Circle’s market cap currently stands at around $27.6 billion, per Yahoo Finance data.

“I can imagine scenarios where Circle is worth much more than my back-of-the-envelope 2030 estimate,” Matt Hougan wrote in a Wednesday blog post.

The bullish forecast comes as US lawmakers, bankers, and stablecoin issuers remain at loggerheads over the Clarity Act. They have clashed over whether or not stablecoin owners should be paid interest on their holdings.

Circle share prices took a tumble yesterday as markets anticipated bad news regarding the stablecoin yield question. But they have since rebounded slightly, gaining almost 3% in the past 24 hours, despite experiencing a 17% drop over the past five days.

Only Game in Town

Hougan explained his “back-of-the-envelope” calculations are based on the fact that Circle’s valuation has “grown significantly” from last year’s pre-initial public offering targets of around $7 billion.

Part of the reason for this growth, he said, is that Circle is the only game in town for stock market investors who want to put their money into the stablecoin sector.

Tether-issued stablecoin USDT’s $184 billion market value is almost 136% higher than USD Coin’s $78 billion, per DefiLlama data. However, Tether has not gone public and hasn’t announced any plans to float anytime soon.

This means traders cannot invest in Tether.

It is not just Tether that Circle has to worry about. Fintech firms and Wall Street giants are also increasingly muscling into the stablecoin market with initiatives of their own.

“One popular view is that Circle’s share of the market will decline over time as big firms like Bank of America, Stripe, and Wells Fargo get involved in stablecoins,” he wrote. “I’m not so sure. Historically, innovators do pretty well at protecting early market leads.”

No Clarity Panic

The Bitwise expert pointed to Citigroup’s September forecast for the stablecoins market, which predicted the market to grow to between $1.9 trillion and $4 trillion.

If Circle continues to corner 25% of the market in this time, maintaining or only slightly increasing its operating costs in the process, the USD Coin issuer’s worth could balloon beyond the $75 billion mark, Hougan said.

And while the stock market may be getting the jitters about the Clarity Act, Hougan said there was no reason to panic for stablecoin issuers like Circle.

There is nothing about the news that stablecoin holders may not receive yield payment that changes Citigroup’s base case forecast of the stablecoin sector’s growth to $1.9 trillion by 2030, he said.

“Interest income has not been a primary driver of stablecoin growth to date,” Hougan wrote. “The vast majority of stablecoins today are held in ways that don’t pay interest.”

Those ways include cross-border transactions, trade settlements, and lending collateral, he said.

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

The billionaire founder of the Asia-based venture firm Fenbushi Capital says he and investigators have made serious inroads in tracking down the lost crypto.

Now, he’s offering up an enticing bounty for further details.

“I am publicly offering a bounty for asset recovery,” Shen said on Thursday.

“Any individual or organisation that makes a substantive contribution to asset recovery — regardless of identity, background, or method — will receive 10% to 20% of the total recovered amount, based on the level of contribution.”

Fenbushi Capital is one of the most active crypto-centric venture firms in Asia, having backed major blockchain companies such as Consensys, Ethereum, Polkadot, and ChainSafe.

The firm manages over $1.6 billion in assets and boasts a portfolio of more than 300 companies.

$42 million heist

In November 2022, Shen revealed that his private crypto wallet had been compromised.

The attackers stole 38.2 million USDC tokens, 1,607 ether, 719,760 USDT, and 4.13 Bitcoin, according to security firm Slowmist at that time.

Slowmist determined the exploit was a result of the attackers gaining access to Shen’s private keys, the 12- to 24-word recovery phrase, which gives holders the ability to send and receive from a given wallet.

With the help of security analyst Tay Monahan and pseudonymous onchain sleuth ZachXBT, Shen said on Thursday that he has already frozen approximately $1.2 million in assets.

He added that artificial intelligence and onchain analytics have made a “qualitative leap” since 2022.

“It is about opening a real case to the community, inviting collaboration, and seeing how far the tools of the AI era can push what was once impossible,” Shen said.

“Justice may be slow, but it doesn’t expire. Neither does the blockchain.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

A new survey conducted on behalf of the Coinbase Institute, a crypto lobby group and think tank, found that Labour voters are “notably more positive about cryptocurrencies than the average young person.”

That’s despite crypto having a tendency to be “right-coded,” with Reform UK and Conservative voters leading support for digital assets in the country.

The findings show that 64% of Labour voters aged 16 to 25 said they had heard of cryptocurrencies.

Some 74% said they were familiar with Bitcoin specifically — 3% higher than among young Reform UK voters.

Additionally, 42% of young Labour voters said they believed cryptocurrency could

play a positive role in their financial future, 10% higher than the average person in their age group.

Labour and crypto

The findings come as the ruling Labour party faces mounting pressure to engage with and regulate the digital assets industry in the UK.

In December, the government said it was working toward “firm and proportionate” legislation for cryptocurrencies.

In January, Lucy Rigby, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, set a deadline of October 25, 2027 for the sweeping crypto bill, but with the caveat that its passing would be “subject to the will of Parliament.”

Yet some say Labour’s approach is too slow. Industry insiders have repeatedly urged lawmakers to step on the gas or risk falling behind the United States and the European Union, which have already approved their own laws.

The Coinbase Institute’s survey is yet another tool the group can use to chide the government into speeding up its progress legislating digital assets. Crypto firms operating in the UK are eager to receive a regulatory green light, which will enable them to roll out new products and services.

While the Labour government doesn’t appear to be explicitly anti-crypto, it also hasn’t done much to support the industry, either.

When the crypto industry warned last year of the potential negative impact of the Bank of England’s proposed £20,000 stablecoin holding cap, Labour leaders did not oppose it, while other politicians, such as Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, were quick to condemn it.

So far, Labour politicians have made more noise about banning crypto political donations than advocating for regulations that could encourage innovation and foster growth in the industry.

“Bitcoin is far more familiar to British under-25s than any ISA, savings bond or other saving scheme,” Tom Duff Gordon, Vice President of International Policy at Coinbase, said, referencing the survey’s findings. “Policymakers need to recognise this shift.”

Reform UK leads

The survey challenges the idea that cryptocurrency only appeals to supporters of right-wing political parties such as Reform UK and the Conservatives — at least among young voters.

Yet it also reaffirms that Farage’s party is winning support from those for whom crypto is a key voting concern.

Among young Britons, Reform UK voters were the most engaged with digital assets, and were the second-most likely to say the asset class could benefit them financially, after young Conservative voters.

Reform UK voters also led on those who said they would trust a political party more if they showed an understanding of new technologies like cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

Farage has done a lot to signal that his party is solidly pro-crypto in recent years.

At the Zebu Live conference in London in October, the Reform UK leader said he would make the UK the crypto capital of the world “when I’m in Number 10,” referring to Number 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s residence.

“I want to bring in digital assets and crypto from the cold in London, to have that regulatory framework under which everybody can operate,” Farage said.

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

In his native France, citizens are only allowed to own these kinds of firearms if they have completed official safety training courses — and may only use them for sports shooting purposes.

Larchevêque, who is becoming increasingly politicised ahead of the 2027 presidential election, said crypto holders “should have the right to self-defence,” French newspaper Le Monde reported.

“We should be allowed to carry category [pistols and rifles] — real weapons,” he said. “If someone comes to your house, you should be able to shoot them and not go to prison.”

His calls come as police announced the arrest of another member of a violent gang suspected of kidnapping and mutilating his fellow Ledger co-founder David Balland.

It is the latest development after a wave of violent attacks against crypto influencers, investors and entrepreneurs swept across the world in general — and France in particular.

Traumatic experience

Larchevêque was at the centre of the Balland kidnapping crisis, which he told the newspaper began for him on January 21, 2025, when he received a video of Balland’s severed finger.

The kidnappers sent a chilling message, telling Larchevêque that the price for seeing his friend and former business partner alive again would be $11.5 million, paid in Bitcoin.

This traumatic experience has taken its toll on Larchevêque, Le Monde said, who has since hired a private security firm to protect himself and his family from would-be crypto kidnappers.

He is not the only one to do so. Security firms are increasingly providing their services and training to crypto entrepreneurs.

Larchevêque claimed that the attack had not convinced him to swap his crypto fortune for fiat currency, however.

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I were holding the fruit of my entire life’s work in euros,” he said.

Getting political

While Larchevêque has previously claimed he is not interested in entering the world of French politics, his comments on firearms echo those of the French far right.

The biggest far-right party in the country, the National Rally, favours relaxing French gun laws for police, but not private citizens.

However, other, more radical political figures have gone a step further.

These include 2022 presidential candidate Éric Zemmour, who has also courted the French crypto sector.

Zemmour, who is mulling another tilt at the presidency in 2027, has long advocated for French citizens’ rights to bear firearms.

Zemmour has also spoken about both Ledger and Larchevêque in glowing terms.

Larchevêque said he admired US President Donald Trump’s decision to embrace the crypto sector.

And he said he had “close ties” with Sarah Knafo, Zemmour’s closest political ally and a candidate for Mayor of Paris.

Last month, he invited Knafo, another prominent Bitcoin advocate, to speak on his increasingly political podcast.

But Larchevêque told the newspaper he does not align himself with any of the leading candidates for the French presidency.

He called himself a “moderate libertarian” and a “Mileiist,” a reference to the Argentinian President Javier Milei, whose short-lived promotion of a memecoin in 2025 recently came back to haunt him.

“For me, the far right and the far left are the same thing,” he said, dismissing both as “enemies of freedom.”

“For me to support a candidate in an election, they would really have to propose an extremely ambitious, radical program,” Larchevêque said. “And I doubt that will happen.”

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

Officers say the unnamed suspect had fled to Spain, with Spanish and French police teaming up for a manhunt that lasted several weeks.

“We deployed a large contingent of police officers to conduct this arrest, as this was a dangerous individual,” the Spanish Civil Guard said in a statement, reported French newspaper Le Parisien. “There was also a possibility that the criminal organisation the suspect belongs to might try to help [him] escape.”

So-called wrench attacks are on the rise in France, where gangs have recently targeted high-profile targets like the Binance France CEO David Prinçay and the families of industry workers and influencers. But police are fighting back, making a string of arrests nationwide.

Court extradition order

The Civil Guard said this arrest means the French authorities have now “identified and arrested all the members” of the gang they think kidnapped Balland and his partner in central France last year.

The gang reportedly cut off one of Balland’s fingers as part of their attempts to force him or his acquaintances to hand over Bitcoin funds worth $11.5 million.

Balland and his partner were held for several hours at different locations as police tried to track the group down.

Law enforcement agencies succeeded in finding the duo, rescuing both Balland and his partner, and arresting 10 people at the suspected crime scenes.

At least one man — the latest arrestee — fled the scene and crossed the border into Spain, the Civil Guard said.

Police said the man first headed to the Valencia region, where officers said he stayed in a rented apartment with his partner and a friend. An unnamed “fourth person” paid for this accommodation, detectives said.

The trio then moved on to Seville and then Cadiz, in the Andalusia region, before finally moving to a property somewhere between Marbella and Malaga, in the municipality of Benalmadena.

The Civil Guard said a court in Fuengirola is arranging an extradition order at a French judge’s request.

Extraditions between Spain and France are highly streamlined processes, with courts leveraging the EU’s European Arrest Warrant protocol.

The protocol allows nations’ courts to work together directly, without the need to involve embassies and other political organs.

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

Some of the latest victims? Employees at Crypto.com, a Singapore-based crypto exchange founded in 2016, who announced on Thursday that it had cut 12% of its workforce.

And like many of the firms reducing their workforce, Crypto.com broadly blames their actions on one thing: artificial intelligence.

“We are joining the list of companies integrating enterprise-wide AI,” Kris Marszalek, Crypto.com’s CEO and co-founder, said.

“Companies that do not make this pivot immediately will fail. Companies that move immediately and pair the best AI tools with top-performers will achieve a level of scale and precision that was previously impossible.”

The exchange joins more than half a dozen crypto firms that have announced similar layoffs since the start of the year, which includes fellow exchange Gemini, data platform Messari, and Optimism Labs, the firm behind the Ethereum layer 2 blockchain.

For years, analysts have warned that as AI develops it will increasingly replace white collar employees, particularly in administration, customer service, and entry-level roles.

AI window dressing?

It’s not just crypto firms cutting jobs and blaming it on AI.

Amazon, Meta, Atlassian, and dozens more firms have also laid off thousands of employees in recent years as they pivot to integrating AI into their workflows.

Yet it’s unclear if these firms are simply window dressing pre-planned cutbacks by framing them as efficiency gains brought about by AI adoption.

In January, research conducted by Oxford Economics, an independent global advisory firm, cast doubt on the idea that AI is to blame for increasing unemployment.

According to the firm’s analysis, “firms don’t appear to be replacing workers with AI on a significant scale,” suggesting companies may be using the technology as a cover for routine headcount reductions.

What’s more, some companies are reportedly rehiring staff they initially thought they could replace with AI, indicating the technology is not yet fully mature for mass replacement.

Earlier this week, Block, the fintech firm behind Cash App, quietly rehired some of the 4,000 employees it laid off last month as part of its AI-driven restructuring.

Still, many of the crypto firms cutting jobs are keen to advertise them as a necessary consequence of increasing their efficiency through AI.

“We’re doubling down on Messari as an AI-first company serving institutions through research and AI products,” Diran Li, the firm’s new CEO, said on Monday after previous CEO Eric Turner stepped down amid widespread job cuts at the firm.

It’s a similar story over at Gemini, the crypto exchange started by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.

“Not using AI at Gemini will soon be the equivalent of showing up to work with a typewriter instead of a laptop,” the exchange said in a Thursday letter to shareholders. “As a result, we have reduced the size of our workforce by roughly 30% since the start of 2026.”

Not just AI

Not everyone is blaming AI for their job cuts, however.

Optimism Labs, one of the most active organisations scaling the Ethereum blockchain, cut some 20 jobs on March 12.

“This is about doing fewer things well, making decisions faster, and reducing coordination overhead,” Jing Wang, the firm’s CEO, said.

The cuts come after Coinbase announced plans to stop sharing revenue from its layer 2 network Base with Optimism in February.

More recently, the Algorand Foundation, a nonprofit that helps develop the Algorand blockchain, announced that it had cut its workforce by 25%.

“This decision was not taken lightly and is in response to the uncertain global macro environment as well as the broader downturn in crypto markets,” the foundation said on Wednesday.

Since the start of the month, the US and Israel’s war with Iran has caused oil and gas prices to soar, sending shockwaves throughout the global economy.

Analysts warn that a spike in inflation driven by higher oil prices could spell further trouble for stocks, gold and crypto.

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

The unnamed influencer’s father was allegedly attacked on December 31, 2024, in Saint-Genis-Pouilly, in the Ain region near the French-Swiss border, French media outlet France 3 reported.

“The victim, a 56-year-old man, was violently assaulted, doused with petroleum, and forced into the trunk of a car, along with his partner,” a spokesperson for the French prosecution said.

Wrench attacks

The arrests come amidst a rise of so-called “wrench attacks.”

In the crypto community, the expression refers to physical assaults and kidnapping attempts whereby criminals try to force crypto holders to send them their coins.

Police have recorded at least seven such attacks so far in March, per data compiled by Jameson Lopp, the co-founder and chief security officer of the crypto wallet provider CasaHODL.

In recent days, police have closed the net on several suspects in multiple cases, with suspicions overseas masterminds have commissioned the attacks.

Police have arrested individuals in Angers and Île-de-France, as well as Épinal, in the Grand Est region.

Detectives said there was evidence of “a structured network” operating behind the scenes.

The latest arrests comes days after police in the outskirts of Paris mobilised 100 armed officers and two helicopters to track down two teens suspected of stealing jewellry from a female crypto holder.

The teens, and an older man, are also accused of attempting to break into another crypto holder’s house “armed with explosive devices.”

Ransom demands

Police say the Saint-Genis-Pouilly attack took place just hours before the couple was due to celebrate the New Year in 2024.

Officers say the attack was carefully planned and carried out by individuals “already known to police and the courts.”

The youngest of the group was aged just 16 at the time of the alleged attack. The oldest was aged 42.

After kidnapping the man and his partner, the gang reportedly contacted their son, described as a Dubai-based influencer and crypto entrepreneur.

Police did not comment on whether or not the victim’s son paid the ransom the alleged kidnappers had demanded.

Detectives found the man near the city of Le Mans, some 700 kilometres from his home. They also found his partner tied up at the scene.

Prosecutors are set to charge all five suspects with kidnapping, unlawful confinement, extortion, organised crime, and aggravated violence.

Bungled Bitcoin burglary

Elsewhere in the county, another gang of would-be crypto robbers was reportedly thwarted by a burglar alarm.

Officers in Nantes reported several individuals tried to break into the house of the CEO of a Bitcoin-related company in the early hours of March 16.

After they triggered an alarm, the group allegedly fled the scene. Police say they are still searching for the suspected intruders.

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

The SEA token was originally scheduled to drop March 30. OpenSea is yet to announce a new release date.

“A delay is a delay. I’m not going to dress it up, and I know how it lands,” CEO Devin Finzer wrote on X on Monday. “So when the Foundation sets a new timeline, it will be deliberate and specific.”

an update on $SEA.

the team has been building at full speed, and the foundation had planned to kick off the first steps as part of our march 30th event. but @openseafdn is pushing back the timeline.

a delay is a delay. i’m not going to dress it up, and i know how it lands.

the…

— dfinzer.eth | opensea (@dfinzer) March 16, 2026

The delay comes as OpenSea tries to regain the huge brand recognition it had during the previous bull market. The NFT market has since shrunk but OpenSea is trying to pivot to new ventures.

A number of highly-anticipated airdrops are also expected in 2026 — despite a market crash that started in October.

‘So if not now, wen?’

SEA was first announced in October by Finzer, who said the idea was for the platform to move from NFTs to “tokens, culture, art, ideas, the digital and the physical. And all in one place that feels like a home, not a bank.”

With SEA, Finzer said, holders would have the ability to stake the token behind their favourite tokens and NFT collections.

But the plan was announced just as the crypto market took a hit, with major coins shedding more than 50% of their value in subsequent months.

“The reality is that market conditions are challenging across crypto right now, and $SEA only launches once,” Finzer wrote on Monday, adding that the OpenSea Foundation wanted to ensure “every piece is in place” before the launch.

OpenSea was the hottest NFT marketplace in 2021 and 2022 when products gained mainstream attention.

The current value of the NFT market hovers around $1.7 billion, according to CoinGecko data. Back in 2022, it hit a high of over $17 billion.

DL News reached out to OpenSea for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

What does 2026 have in store?

A number of top crypto brands have tokens set to be released this year.

Crypto-powered betting site Polymarket in October announced a native token, and Ethereum-based MetaMask said last year that its MASK token was coming “sooner than you would expect.”

America’s biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase, said last year that it was exploring a token for its layer 2 blockchain, Base.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

The trader, who goes by “little x” according to blockchain data platform Arkham Intelligence, received $6.4 million worth of the memecoin from a Binance hot wallet on Thursday, hours after the announcement.

Since then, the token has rallied some 32%, boosting the value of the trader’s stash to some $8.6 million.

Little x, who is currently first in line to attend the second gala dinner, has yet to sell any of their tokens.

The timing of the gala dinner comes at a crucial time in US politics. Ahead of the pivotal midterm elections in November, Democrats are increasingly attacking Trump and his allies over the president’s many crypto dealings. Those attacks coincide with the crypto lobby investing over $271 million to sway the outcome of this year’s vote.

Second event

It’s the second time Trump has organised an exclusive gala dinner for those who purchase his memecoin.

Last year, the president hosted a similar dinner at the Trump National Golf Club near Washington for the top 220 holders of the token.

Democrats slammed the event as a “crypto corruption club,” and an example of the president using his position to profit.

Others noted the high number of foreign attendees, which included Chinese-born Tron founder Justin Sun and the anonymous co-founder of MemeCore, a crypto firm based in Singapore.

The issue, according to critics, is that the event effectively grants anyone with deep enough pockets access to Trump and his inner circle, and the connections and social cachet that brings.

What’s more, the entry requirement helps boost the value of Trump’s stash of his memecoin, which sits at just over $3 billion.

The White House has repeatedly refuted any allegations of wrongdoing.

“President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest,” Anna Kelly, the deputy press secretary, previously told DL News.

Trump hasn’t let the accusations stop him from hosting an even bigger dinner.

This time, the top 297 holders will be able to attend this year’s event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

The top 29 holders will also qualify for a VIP reception with the president. The event’s website states there will be no private meetings with Trump, and no gifts will be accepted.

Trump profits

Although some traders have profited from the announcement of the second gala dinner, longer-term holders of the token have fared badly.

The memecoin is down over 94% from its all-time high, and has dropped 18% since the start of the year.

Yet at the same time, Trump has locked in vast profits from the venture.

Trump or Trump-controlled companies will eventually receive a whopping 80% of his memecoin’s total supply, according to the Trump memecoin website. At $3.93 a token and with one billion total tokens in existence, his memecoin trove is worth around $3.1 billion.

However, this stash couldn’t all be sold without crashing the token’s price, meaning its real value is substantially less.

So far, wallets tied to Trump’s memecoin have sent over $96 million worth of USDC and $8.5 million worth of TRUMP to Fireblocks, a crypto custody platform that also sells assets on its clients’ behalf.

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

Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, and even legendary Bitcoiner Adam Back all responded to Johnson’s article, “I’ve long suspected Bitcoin is a giant Ponzi scheme and now I’m hearing tales of woe that make me fear I’m right.”

“Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme,” wrote Bitcoin treasury pioneer Saylor on X on Friday.

Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi requires a central operator promising returns and paying early investors with funds from later ones. Bitcoin has no issuer, no promoter, and no guaranteed return—just an open, decentralized monetary network driven by code and market demand.

— Michael Saylor (@saylor) March 13, 2026

“A Ponzi requires a central operator promising returns and paying early investors with funds from later ones.”

The responses came after Johnson posted his Daily Mail column on X where he warned would-be investors about putting their money in crypto.

The politician isn’t the first high-ranking official to have referred to cryptocurrencies as a Ponzi.

‘But Bitcoin? What is it?’

Johnson, who was UK Prime Minister from 2019-2022, wrote in the Daily Mail that he had met a fellow churchgoer who needed financial help.

After lending the “nice old boy” money, he found out that he had lost cash by buying Bitcoin.

I've long suspected Bitcoin is a giant Ponzi scheme and now I'm hearing tales of woe that make me fear I'm right.https://t.co/rTny2NBaYB

— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) March 13, 2026

Johnson went on to write that while Bitcoin is decentralised, if people lose faith in the cryptocurrency, it could lose value — and burn investors as a result.

“The more elderly people get ripped off — in the name of Bitcoin — the faster that disillusion will set in,” wrote Johnson.

“I have always suspected from the outset that all cryptocurrencies were basically a Ponzi scheme, with very few good-use cases.”

Oh, Bozza!

The crypto community was quick to try and correct Johnson.

Saylor added that the biggest cryptocurrency had “no guaranteed return — just an open, decentralized monetary network driven by code and market demand.”

And investor and fund manager Fred Kreuger added: “A Ponzi usually needs a central operator, Boris. Bitcoin just has math. Your system has the Bank of England.”

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino simply highlighted X’s community notes, which gave detailed explanations on why Bitcoin is not a Ponzi.

Blockstream CEO and early Bitcoin developer Adam Back responded to Johnson’s post by using his nickname, “Bozza.”

bozza! 🤣

— Adam Back (@adam3us) March 14, 2026

The Ponzi narrative

Bitcoin has long been described by crypto critics as a Ponzi — a scam where people are rewarded for conning others to pile into a bogus investment with false promises of big returns.

Economist Nouriel Roubini has in the past called crypto a “total real‑bubble Ponzi scheme” that will collapse.

And European Central Bank Executive Board member Fabio Panetta in 2022 referred to the digital asset industry as a Ponzi, likening crypto to a “house of cards” that could collapse.

But those in the crypto world simply point to Bitcoin and other digital assets not having a central authority — as Ponzi schemes typically do — as a rebuttal to the critique.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

The crypto industry took an unexpected swipe at a seemingly innocuous Senate race playing out in the state.

Far from being a firebrand crypto critic like some of her more outspoken Democratic colleagues, Juliana Stratton, the lieutenant governor of Illinois and a candidate in the state’s Democratic Senate primary, has said very little about digital assets.

Until now.

“$7 million,” she said in the 36-second clip on March 3. “That’s how much a MAGA-backed crypto PAC just dumped into attack ads against me because they know that I can’t be bought.”

The incident was odd.

Sure, she had been endorsed by the staunchly anti-crypto Democrat Elizabeth Warren, but Stratton herself hadn’t voiced any clear opinion on crypto one way or another.

“She has not been particularly outspoken about crypto, and even Stand With Crypto had not identified her as having a stance on the topic,” Molly White, a crypto researcher who tracks donations from the industry, told DL News.

That changed after Stratton’s video.

Because of the video — which was a response to the attack ads against her — Stand With Crypto, the pro-crypto advocacy group backed by Coinbase, now ranks Stratton as “strongly against crypto.”

Meanwhile, Stand With Crypto says Stratton’s main rival for the seat, Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democratic congressman, “strongly supports crypto.”

Unlike Stratton, he’s played a much larger role in earning that title.

He backed landmark stablecoin legislation in the Genius Act and has supported advancing the Clarity Act.

The industry has publicly backed his campaign by $25,300, according to data compiled by White.

It isn’t much.

But the Illinois incident offers a unique glimpse into how crypto lobbying groups are preparing for one of the most consequential elections in US history.

Neither Stratton nor Krishnamoorthi’s campaigns replied to DL News’ requests for comment.

High stakes

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs, and 35 seats in the Senate are being contested in the November elections.

If Democrats win the House but the Republicans maintain control of the Senate, then all legislative work will grind to a halt.

‘The 2024 elections made clear that crypto is a real constituency, made up of tens of millions of Americans who own digital assets, and that they vote.‘

Summer Mersinger, CEO of the Blockchain Association, an industry advocacy group

That means, unless the crypto industry and the banking lobby are able to break the gridlock over the Clarity Act before November, then there’s little chance that the critical bill will see the light of day before the presidential election in 2028.

The midterms are also personal for President Donald Trump.

Republicans losing the House would open the door for him to be impeached for a third time.

His ouster, however unlikely, would also curtail what’s been a relatively productive period for the industry despite lagging prices.

Since taking office, Trump has been a staunch supporter of the crypto industry.

He has paved the way for landmark legislation, appointed industry supporters to key government positions, and issued a barrage of executive orders to promote the industry since taking office.

But his and his family’s ties to the industry have also made him a target of attacks from Democrats like Warren.

For instance, Trump and his sons are co-founders of a crypto project called World Liberty Financial. In May, its stablecoin, USD1, was used by an Abu Dhabi investment firm to invest $2 billion in the crypto exchange Binance.

Trump has also launched official memecoins for himself and First Lady Melania Trump.

Both those tokens now trade 94% and 99%, respectively, below their all-time highs.

In May, Trump hosted a gala dinner for the top 220 holders of his memecoin.

Of the 25 VIP guests who attended the event, 19 were foreign nationals, a House Judiciary Committee Democrats report said in November. They included a member of an advisory body that seeks to broaden the Chinese Communist Party’s influence.

Business dealings like that have raised concerns about foreign influence on policies and sparked accusations that Trump is using the power of the Oval Office to enrich himself, his family and his friends

The White House has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Yet these attacks are likely to keep coming.

“As the midterm elections approach, various political actors are naturally highlighting distinctions in policy and personal financial involvement to mobilise their respective bases,” G Clay Miller, partner at digital asset consultancy Penrose Partners and previous Brooklyn County Democratic Committee member, told DL News.

Crypto’s $271 million donations

Lobbying groups like the super-political action committee FairShake have already ploughed over $271 million into swaying the outcome of votes across the US, predominantly through advertising, according to White’s data.

The group counts crypto companies like Coinbase, Ripple, and Uniswap Labs, as well as venture capital titan Andreessen Horowitz, among its top donors.

Other prominent industry advocacy groups injecting funding into 2026 races include the Fellowship PAC and the Protect Progress super PAC, according to White’s data.

Of the $271 million injected into races this year, just under 40% has gone to Republicans, 3% to Democrats, and the rest to non-partisan individuals so far.

Miller says he expects the crypto lobby to push more money into Democrats’ campaigns to “broaden the industry’s bipartisan base.”

Not every lobbying group will participate in that effort.

Over the past few years, a wave of pro-MAGA advocacy groups has also emerged.

That includes the Digital Freedom Fund, backed by the Winklevoss twins and Kraken, and First Principles Digital.

“The 2024 elections made clear that crypto is a real constituency, made up of tens of millions of Americans who own digital assets, and that they vote,” Summer Mersinger, CEO of the Blockchain Association, an industry advocacy group, told DL News. “That will not change in 2026.”

With 235 days until the midterms in November, these groups are on track to outspend their campaigns in the run-up to the 2024 election, says White.

As for what that spending will consist of, White reckons more attacks like those seen in the Illinois senate race will follow.

“Spend heavily in the primaries as a show of force, conveying to candidates that if they don’t embrace the crypto agenda — or at least keep quiet about it — they too could face millions of dollars in opposition spending.”

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

The South Korean Supreme Court upheld a previous district court sentence handed out to the unnamed man, aged in his 30s, rejecting his legal team’s claims that his mental health had been compromised.

“We have taken into account the fact that the defendant had been receiving psychiatric counseling since middle school and that he committed the crime while in a state of mental weakness,” a panel of Supreme Court judges said in sentencing. “However, the district court’s decision was correct in its understanding of the laws regarding mental disorders.”

The gory incident is just one of a growing string of macabre crypto-related crimes reported in South Korea.

Earlier this year, police accused a crypto investor of spiking his business partner’s iced latte with a deadly dose of toxic pesticide after a financial dispute.

‘Multiple stab wounds’

Prosecutors told the court the defendant ran a crypto investment company, and began dating his girlfriend in August 2020, South Korean media outlet EDaily reported.

In February 2021, the duo began living together in a 19th-floor apartment of a residential complex in the Seocho District of Seoul. But as the crypto markets experienced volatility, the man’s financial situation worsened.

He complained he was finding it hard to pay his rent and other expenses. During this time, the woman found a job, which stoked the defendant’s fury.

“I want to die,” he told her, prosecutors told the court.

Prosecutors said that during this time, the defendant “became increasingly possessive” towards the woman.

When she complained she was “unable to put up with his continuous obsession” on March 11, 2023, and demanded a breakup, the man “stabbed her about 10 times with a weapon,” prosecutors said.

He then attempted to disguise the death as a suicide by throwing her out of a balcony window.

The man called the police, claiming that he was also planning to take his own life, but a police unit arrived at the apartment before he could act.

An autopsy later determined the woman had died as a result of stab wounds.

‘No remorse’

During their investigation, detectives found evidence of drug use and charged the man with violations of the Narcotics Control Act.

Police later established that the man had also begun selling illegal drugs before the murder.

The district court found the man guilty of all charges, also fining him over $2,000.

In sentencing, the presiding district court judge said the woman “must have suffered unendurable pain” before her death.

“Her family also suffered deep wounds that are difficult to heal, and demand severe punishment,” said the same judge.

The man appealed the verdict at a branch of the high court last year. But the appellate court upheld the sentence, saying the defendant had shown “insufficient remorse.”

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

But pirate operations are still going — and locals are suffering as a result.

The latest: Authorities in the village of Atamanovka found a mining operation had stolen 711,000 rubles, around $9,000, worth of electricity from the grid, state-owned Russian media outlet Arguments and Facts reported Monday.

According to the report, energy workers had discovered damage to a metering device in a resident’s home. After investigating, they found a mining operation had been using electricity from the grid in the Chitinsky District.

Reports did not specify what cryptocurrencies the illicit operation had been mining but said the offender would have to pay a fine and damage to the electricity company.

Incidents on the rise

Cowboy mining operations are becoming increasingly common in Russia. Just last month, police arrested a man who allegedly stole $80,000 worth of power from the region’s grid to power his rigs.

The man had allegedly used a series of illegal connections to link his devices to the power grid in an outbuilding on his property, according to authorities.

And last year, cops shut down a sophisticated illegal crypto mining scheme that they suspect had been masterminded by the son of a former presidential candidate.

Russian authorities have said that illegal miners steal millions of dollars of electricity every year.

Mining hotspot

Still, Russia’s government doesn’t want to ban mining, but rather regulate the business.

Last year, President Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing cryptocurrency mining in the country.

The law states that legal entities can only mine if they have been approved by the digital ministry; foreign operations have been banned from doing business in the country.

Back in 2022, Putin said Russia had certain “competitive advantages” in mining crypto due to the country’s electricity surplus.

Russia is a big player in the Bitcoin mining business and currently supplies over 16% of the global hash rate, according to Hashrate Index.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

The poll-leading Reform Party leader framed his investment in Kwasi Kwarteng’s Stack BTC, a Bitcoin treasury company, as his latest act of support for the UK’s crypto community.

“I have long been one of the UK’s few political advocates for Bitcoin, recognising the role digital currencies will play in the future of business and finance,” Farage said in a statement.

“London and the UK has (sic.) historically been the centre of [the] world’s financial markets, and I believe that we can and should be a major global hub for the crypto industry.”

Farage’s investment further underscores his ambition to replicate Donald Trump’s success in the 2024 presidential election, in which the US president secured his return to the White House with ample support from the crypto industry.

While the two right-wing populists have been seen as close in the past, their relationship seems to be cooling, as Trump decided not to meet Farage at Mar-a-Lago this weekend, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

Over the years, Farage has become a common fixture at industry events, and last year the Reform Party became the first UK party to accept cryptocurrency donations.

Kwarteng’s Bitcoin treasury

Kwarteng served as chancellor of the Exchequer for just over a month in 2022 and is best known for announcing a slew of policies aimed at boosting economic growth.

Instead, his mini-budget triggered a crisis in the UK gilt market, saw the value of the sterling crash and led to Kwarteng’s defenestration from then-Prime Minister Liz Truss’ government.

Truss was ousted from Number 10 just days after.

Since leaving government, Kwarteng has maintained a relatively low profile.

Yet he reemerged in November, announcing that he was backing Stack BTC.

“Crypto is not going to disappear — and given London’s importance and history as a financial centre it’s important that we play a part in this new industry,” he said at the time.

Stack BTC is part of a wave of some 200 companies that aim to replicate the success of Strategy, the software company-turned Bitcoin treasury, which has seen its stock surge by 280% since it began buying Bitcoin in 2022.

They had reason to be excited. The Trump presidency’s pro-crypto tilt seemed to herald an unprecedented Bitcoin rally. Over the last year, the price rose and rose.

As it did, companies banking the digital asset on their balance sheet could issue more shares to raise capital and buy even more Bitcoin.

Many also tapped low-interest debt to help them purchase the soaring asset.

Mounting pressure

Yet, these companies have come under pressure amid the crypto market contracting by almost 50% from its October record highs. Many have stopped buying Bitcoin and begun offloading their assets.

Those firms now hold Bitcoin worth about $76 billion, roughly half of their peak value, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net.

Strategy itself has seen its stock fall by almost 70% since its July highs.

Moreover, Goldman Sachs has named Saylor’s firm the most-shorted stock among companies with market caps over $25 billion.

By contrast, Stack BTC has seen its share price surge by 83% since the start of the year, according to Yahoo Finance.

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

The leader of the UK Reform Party pulled ahead of both Labour and the Conservative Party in terms of donations, thanks to a £3 million contribution from Christopher Harborne, a crypto investor and an aviation entrepreneur, according to Electoral Commission data.

The November donation marks Harborne’s second donation to the far-right party. He donated £9 million to the Reform Party in August.

The latest crypto donation brought the Reform Party’s donations to £5.5 million in the fourth quarter, ahead of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, which received £2.3 million and £1.7 million during the same period, the Financial Times reported

The Reform Party did not immediately return a request for comment.

The donations came after the Reform Party became the first British political party to accept donations in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in May. It is the only party that accepts crypto donations.

Since then, several members of parliament have called for a ban on crypto donations, arguing that they raise the risk of foreign interference.

Concern over foreign interference in UK politics has grown, not least with the conviction of Nathan Gill, the former Reform UK leader in Wales, who was jailed for more than 10 years after admitting to taking bribes for pro-Russia interviews and speeches.

Bring crypto ‘in from the cold’

The latest donation also highlights how Farage’s ambitions to replicate US President Donald Trump’s successful strategy of aligning himself with the crypto industry’s interests.

Farage, a member of parliament, has spoken at international Bitcoin conferences and made pro-crypto overtures for years. In 2025, he ramped up his pro-crypto campaign.

He said he would make the UK the crypto capital of the world “when I’m in Number 10,” referring to Number 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s residence.

“I want to bring in digital assets and crypto from the cold in London, to have that regulatory framework under which everybody can operate,” Farage said at the Zebu Live conference in London in October.

Last year, Farage not only signed off on the party accepting crypto donations, but also fired off a barrage of pro-industry volleys.

That included attacking the Bank of England for its proposed cap on stablecoin ownership, championing a pro-industry bill, urging the central bank to create a Bitcoin reserve, and pledging to turn the UK into a crypto powerhouse.

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

Omsk’s Leninsky District Court sentenced the three, all aged between 21 and 23, to prison on March 3.

“The defendants broke into the [unnamed] victim’s apartment, threatened him with a knife, beat him, and demanded that he hand over cryptocurrencies and cash,” prosecutors told the court, the Omsk Oblast Prosecutor’s Office reported on its Telegram channel.

Crypto holders have recently become a key target for criminals in Russia and in other countries.

Last year was the worst year on record for so-called wrench attacks, with criminals torturing victims and cutting off their fingers. Experts warn of an escalation in brutality in 2026, with nearly a dozen violent attacks or kidnappings of crypto entrepreneurs, investors, and their loved ones reported in January and February.

Yet, the courts are catching up.

In November, a court in western Russia jailed two knife-wielding attackers who stole crypto worth $171,000 from a blogger.

And a court in Kazan has begun the trial of seven people suspected of beating and forcing a man to send them crypto worth $42,000.

Violent attack

The Omsk incident took place on April 10, 2024, the court heard, after the trio’s accomplice, a courier who had previously delivered a package to the address, identified the victim as a crypto owner.

Police showed the court closed-circuit television footage of the three defendants, wearing masks and hoods, approaching the apartment complex at night.

The trio tricked the victim into answering the door before forcing their way in and torturing him at knifepoint.

However, the attack was cut short after a neighbour grew suspicious about the noises coming from the apartment and came to investigate.

This caused the criminals to panic and flee the scene of the crime before they could get their hands on any crypto, prosecutors explained.

The three defendants denied involvement in the crime, but the court found them guilty of all charges and ordered them to serve their terms in maximum-security penal colonies.

The court also ordered them to pay the victim over $5,000 in damages.

The trio’s courier acquaintance is being tried separately.

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

A report from crypto exchange Lemon shows that adoption in the region last year grew three times faster than in the US. And Argentina led with the highest number of monthly active users.

While Argentines have in the past turned to stablecoins to fight rampant inflation, Lemon attributed the surge in 2025 to payments infrastructure.

“Just as nobody talks about the Internet but everyone uses it every day, the same thing is happening with crypto in finance,” Maxi Raimondi, the company’s chief financial officer, said.

All in the apps

While Argentines did indeed buy cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin in 2025, the increased adoption was mostly driven by their use of stablecoins, according to Lemon.

The reason: A record number of Argentines went on holiday to Brazil thanks to a weaker Brazilian real and stronger Argentine peso.

To buy things in Brazil, Argentine tourists had to download mobile apps that interact with Brazilian payment platform Pix.

Apps that interact with Pix — like Binance and Lemon — use stablecoins such as USDT to make payments, hence the increase in cryptocurrency adoption.

“In Argentina, four times more people are using crypto than in 2021, without even realizing it,” added Raimondi.

Pix is the preferred method of payment in Brazil, Latin America’s biggest economy. Debuted by the country’s central bank in 2020, it is more popular than credit and debit cards.

Crypto adoption in Argentina has surged in recent years, with people in the country buying digital dollars as a hedge against the world’s worst inflation. In 2025, though, inflation in the country dropped to its lowest in eight years.

Where else?

The report also showed that adoption surged in Peru — the region’s sixth largest economy.

According to Lemon, there were over 2.9 million crypto app downloads in the country in 2025, up 50% from the year before.

And transaction volume across exchanges in Peru beat that of Chile, a bigger economy. While Peruvian investors are interested in holding Bitcoin over the long-term, the report said, they are keener on digital dollars.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

The reason?

Artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed what it means to build and run a company, Jack Dorsey, the firm’s co-founder and CEO, said in a Thursday letter to shareholders reporting the firm’s fourth quarter financial results.

“Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes,” Dorsey said in the letter.

The layoffs reduce the headcount of the company — which owns Square, Cash App, and several Bitcoin-related enterprises — from 10,000 to less than 6,000.

Block’s stock, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange, jumped some 24% following the announcement.

The layoffs come as investors grow increasingly fearful that the AI boom, which has helped boost markets for years, will ultimately hurt investors and crush the wider economy.

On Sunday, a widely-circulated report from Citrini Research, an investment research provider, argued that if AI continues to advance, it will trigger widespread white-collar layoffs, weakening consumer spending and slowing growth.

More layoffs

Block is among Bitcoin’s biggest corporate advocates, with the firm integrating Bitcoin payments into Square and Cash App, running Bitkey, a self-custody Bitcoin hardware wallet, and even developing its own Bitcoin mining machines.

Some industry pundits even contend Dorsey is Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto — a claim the Twitter founder has denied on multiple occasions.

Block has undergone several rounds of layoffs in recent years. This is the first time the firm has cited AI as the reason for the redundancies.

“We over-hired during COVID because I incorrectly built two separate company structures (Square and Cash App) rather than one, which we corrected mid 2024,” Dorsey said on X, addressing the latest layoffs.

Block is one of hundreds of firms leaning heavily into AI.

Spotify co-CEO Gustav Söderström said in a fourth-quarter earnings call in early February that his firm’s top developers “have not written a single line of code” in 2026, instead using AI exclusively to design software.

Most companies ‘late’ to AI

It’s also not the only one laying off employees because of it.

In January, Amazon laid off 16,000 employees, which Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s chief financial officer, attributed to cost reductions as it ramps up AI spending.

In the same month, Pinterest announced layoffs affecting roughly 15% of its workforce as part of a reallocation of resources to AI-focused products.

Salesforce, Klarna, and Accenture have also cut thousands of jobs amid increased use of AI and automation.

Block’s latest layoffs could be a sign that the trend is accelerating.

“I don’t think we’re early to this realisation,” Dorsey said.

“I think most companies are late.”

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

Putin signed a new law that will amend the country’s Criminal Code, and recognise cryptocurrencies as a form of intangible property, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported.

The law codifies existing protocols for seizing digital assets, Deputy Justice Minister Elena Ardabyeva told the newspaper. But instead of relying on legal precedent for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the confiscation of various altcoins, these protocols are now enshrined in Russian law.

The law also provides legal avenues for cooperation with foreign crypto exchanges, Ardabyeva said.

The development comes as Russia tries to bring order to its largely unregulated crypto sector.

Experts say the Kremlin could even begin to block citizens’ access to overseas crypto exchanges this year, amid government claims that citizens spend a collective $650 million a day on crypto trades.

Courts’ new powers

The law stipulates that police or prosecutors’ requests to confiscate crypto must include details on the type and quantity of the token in question, as well as wallet addresses.

The law also allows bailiffs to transfer crypto to government-controlled wallets.

The State Duma is working on a raft of new crypto laws this year. Moscow wants to force traders to use domestic platforms or crypto exchanges that have a physical presence in Russia.

The Kremlin is also set to change the way it taxes and polices Bitcoin miners.

And the Russian legal system is struggling to keep up. Crypto-related crime is “becoming one of the key challenges now facing the judiciary,” Olga Tisen, rector of the V.M. Lebedev Russian State University of Justice, told Russian newspaper Vedomosti on February 24.

“Currently, Russia has virtually no systematic programs to train lawyers to work with digital assets and cryptocurrencies in civil and criminal cases,” Tisen explained.

Tisen said the university has responded by creating the nation’s first master’s program in cryptocurrency law.

Russia, North Korea, and Iran are collectively responsible for conducting $100 billion worth of sanctions-evading trade transactions, the blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis claimed in January.

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

The business partner escaped death, but was in a medically induced coma for three days after collapsing in a busy Seoul cafe, South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported.

The accused, aged 39, will stand trial for attempted murder and violations of the South Korean Pesticide Control Act, prosecutors said.

The incident comes amid a rise in crypto-related crime in South Korea.

In January, prosecutors accused a Seoul-based plastic surgery manager of laundering millions of dollars’ worth of Chinese customers’ Alipay and WeChat Pay payments.

Crypto investment failed

The unnamed duo began working together in 2022, running Bitcoin investment programmes and co-launching a company.

However, the partners’ relationship reportedly deteriorated after the accused made a further secret crypto investment of $810,000.

This investment reportedly failed, and the duo clashed after the business partner discovered that the accused had used company funds to make it.

Despite this clash, the two men reportedly continued to work together. But prosecutors say the accused resented his partner’s rebukes and planned a murder to take sole control of the company and its funds.

Prosecutors, South Korean media outlet Asia Kyungjae reported, say the accused bought a lethal dose of the illegal pesticide methomyl from an online vendor based in China.

Mesomyl is colourless and odourless, but is highly toxic. Doses of between 0.5 and 50 milligrams per kilogram of body weight can be lethal for humans. Ingestion of methomyl at even relatively modest doses can cause symptoms such as headache, vomiting, severe abdominal pain, low blood pressure, and breathing problems.

South Korean lawmakers ordered a ban on domestic methomyl manufacturing and sales in 2012. They followed up with a blanket ban on its distribution and use on South Korean territory in 2015.

Poisonous pesticide

Prosecutors said that the accused bought an unspecified amount of the pesticide on October 28 for around $200, with the product illegally smuggled into the country via Incheon International Airport in a cargo delivery from China 10 days later.

Two weeks later, when the duo had arranged to meet at a cafe near a lake in Seoul’s Songpa District, the accused allegedly arrived early and sent a text message to his business partner, asking him what he wanted to drink.

The business partner reportedly asked for an iced latte. After buying the drink, the accused reportedly added the pesticide to the beverage and gave it to his business partner when the latter arrived.

The business partner collapsed shortly after drinking the latte and was rushed to a nearby hospital. Doctors put the business partner into an induced coma, from which he only emerged three days later.

“I was about to get married, and my future wife was in the early stages of her pregnancy,” the accused business partner told Asia Kyungjae. “My family was almost completely destroyed. I have since made a partial recovery, but I still need medical treatment.”

The trial is set to begin on March 10 at a branch of the Seoul Eastern District Court.

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

Officials in the city of Gwangju sparked outrage in January when they admitted they had lost control of the 320 confiscated Bitcoin they had been holding in five USB-powered cold wallets in a sealed vault. The furore escalated when police in Seoul admitted losing $2 million worth of Bitcoin in similar circumstances.

“We plan to conduct a thorough investigation to clearly explain the full details of the case,” a Gwangju prosecution official said, South Korean newspaper Munhwa Ilbo reported.

Crypto-related crime is on the rise in South Korea and elsewhere in the world.

A security expert this month warned crypto owners they should learn how to fight as crypto-hungry criminals become ever more violent in their efforts to steal other people’s tokens.

Lost and found

The Gwangju District Prosecutors’ Office said it had first discovered the Bitcoin was missing on January 16.

Officials say prosecution staffers attempted to use an online wallet checking tool during an August 2025 audit. This tool, however, turned out to be a phishing platform that allowed its operators to automatically drain all five wallets of their contents.

Prosecutors said they “quickly identified” the phishing website’s crypto wallet. They then asked all domestic and major international exchanges to block all transactions made using this wallet.

They also launched a probe into the suspected operator of the phishing site and various related companies.

Prosecutors confiscated the cold wallets during a November 2021 investigation into the suspected operator of an illegal online gambling site.

The wallets were found in the possession of the suspect’s daughter, who is also facing criminal charges.

The trials of these two suspects are still ongoing in Gwangju. Following the revelations, prosecution and police offices around the country were ordered to audit cold wallets to ensure no more confiscated crypto had gone missing.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 0.1% over the past 24 hours, and is trading at $68,168.
• Ethereum is also up 0.1% over the past day, and is currently priced at $1,979.

What we’re reading

• OpenAI KYC provider accused of sharing users’ crypto addresses with federal agencies — DL News
• Bitcoin dev says we’re ‘not prepared’ for quantum future where major players are ‘spooks’ — DL News
• Crypto and fintech firms seek shortcut to banking: buy one — Wall Street Journal
• Russia to begin ‘mass blocking’ of major crypto exchanges in summer, warns expert – DL News
• Elon’s next move: crypto trading — Milk Road

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

While the US president is busy steamrolling into his second year in office with a slew of new policies, his family’s crypto venture is drawing a star-studded crowd to an event at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort, on February 18.

The lineup of speakers includes the CEOs of Coinbase, BitGo, Franklin Templeton and Goldman Sachs, as well as the president of FIFA, rapper Nicki Minaj, celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary, and a slew of elected officials and regulators.

They’ll be joined by a “select group of 300 global leaders,” according to World Liberty Financial.

The goal?

To define “what the next century of American innovation, leadership, and economic influence will look like,” according to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s firstborn and co-founder of the crypto company.

The World Liberty Forum is the Trump family’s latest crypto initiative.

Over the past year, the company has announced plans to launch a foreign exchange and remittance platform, created a digital asset treasury, and applied for a US federal banking license.

The event’s timing is notable.

It comes as the president’s political rivals are ramping up the pressure on the White House regarding his family’s crypto deals.

At the same time, the 79-year-old is seemingly losing support among crypto industry insiders who are disappointed with the results of his first year in office.

What’s World Liberty Financial?

World Liberty Financial was founded in 2024. It is at the centre of the Trump family’s crypto empire. The company positions itself as a decentralised finance platform and stablecoin issuer, serving as a bridge between traditional finance and crypto.

Co-founders include presidential sons Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Barron Trump, as well as Zach and Alex Witkoff, sons of the president’s foreign policy advisor Steve Witkoff.

Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump are both co-founders emeritus, according to the company‘s website.

The venture issues USD1, a dollar-pegged stablecoin backed by US Treasuries and cash equivalents.

Since its launch, the USD1 stablecoin has become the fifth-largest stablecoin by circulation, with $5 billion in circulation, according to DefiLlama data.

Yet, the project has also drawn ire from investors.

Fans who poured $550 million into buying the WLFI token, issued by World Liberty Financial, have been left disappointed after realising they’re unable to sell the tokens.

And while they’ve been unable to offload the tokens, they’ve seen the price tumble 69% below its peak.

World Liberty Financial has released 20% of the tokens so far and has promised a vote among holders on when the rest will be made available. That vote hasn’t materialised yet.

Political attacks

The Trump family’s crypto dealings have also opened up attack lines for his political opponents.

Over the past year, Democrats have raised concerns about Donald Trump’s crypto dealings.

On Friday, US Democratic Party Senators Elizabeth Warren and Andy Kim fired off the latest salvo in their campaign by issuing a formal letter to Scott Bessent, the US Secretary of the Treasury.

In it, they called for a probe into World Liberty Financial on national security grounds over a reported $500 million equity stake in the firm linked to the United Arab Emirates.

They cited a Wall Street Journal report that say the deal was signed four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration and saw the UAE firm buy a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial.

The letter sets a March deadline to respond.

It follows from a November attack when Democrats on the Judiciary Committee accused the president of corruption, saying that his family’s crypto ventures “leveraged his office to make himself a crypto billionaire.”

In November, a 60 Minutes investigation linked a $2 billion investment deal between Binance and Abu Dhabi’s MGX to Trump’s presidential pardon for the exchange’s co-founder Changpeng Zhao.

Critics link the deal, which was conducted with USD1, to the pardon.

In December, Binance launched a programme to promote the use of USD1. It offered up to 20% yield on USD1 holdings of up to $50,000.

Binance custodies an overwhelming 92% of the USD1 supply, according to blockchain intelligence platform Arkham.

Zhao denied allegations of wrongdoing in a recent podcast.

“I didn’t do much,” Zhao replied to questions about what he did to get the pardon. “I didn’t do anything.”

The White House has also consistently dismissed accusations of wrongdoing.

“The President has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities,” White House counsel David Warrington told DL News.

When asked, White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly repeated to DL News that “President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest.”

‘Bad for the industry’

World Liberty Financial is far from the Trump family’s only crypto-related project.

Trump-linked projects include everything from non-fungible tokens to Bitcoin treasury plays, with mixed results. The president’s official memecoin and the one associated with First Lady Melania Trump are down 95% and 99% since their all-time highs.

Pundits have criticised the Trump-linked memecoins.

“This obviously gives a clear green light that any crime and attention-grabbing schema is now legal,” Ivan, a pseudonymous co-founder of GearBox Protocol and admin of DeFi research group Lobster DAO, told DL News in January 2025, days after the memecoins were launched.

At the time, businessman Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Trump’s own White House communications director in 2017, was equally doubtful, branding them as “as bad for the industry.”

In the year since, rumblings among the crypto community have grown louder.

‘Upbeat’ for Mar-a-lago

Donald Trump came out in support of the crypto industry during his 2024 campaign. He promised to make the US the crypto capital of the world. In return, the industry drove $18 million into his inauguration in January 2025.

In office, the president has repaid the support by issuing pro-industry executive orders, pardoning influential industry players, backing light-touch regulations, and signing a landmark stablecoin bill into law.

Those initiatives helped drive Bitcoin to a record high of over $126,000 in October, with the rest of the crypto market surging in tandem.

However, uncertainties caused by the president’s foreign policies — including threats to punish trading partners with sky-high tariffs and attempts to take Greenland — have weighed on markets.

Since October, the crypto market has lost about $2 trillion, or half, of its total value.

The fact that the wipeout occurred while other assets — such as tech stocks and gold — surged has rattled crypto traders, who have cashed out in droves, thus draining liquidity from the sector.

That, combined with more crypto-friendly legislation having stalled, has seen some members of the cryptorati turn against the president.

“At the end, he was bad for crypto. Big mistake to have him as president,” crypto influencer Carl Runefelt tweeted.

Whether this backlash will carry over into the midterms this year remains to be seen.

To be sure, other crypto influencers expressed outrage when a top Democratic account appeared to mock the Bitcoin crash earlier in February, Axios reports.

It is against this backdrop that the World Liberty Forum will go ahead.

And, despite the controversies, members of the crypto community seem excited about the event.

“The industry is very upbeat about the potential of such a gathering,” Pranav Agarwal, portfolio advisor and investor at Ajna Capital, told DL News.

The event “signals the coming together of blockchain-based solutions, especially decentralised finance and stablecoins with traditional policy makers and financial powerhouses,” Agarwal said.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email them at lance@dlnews.com and eric@dlnews.com.

Police have arrested a man who allegedly stole $80,000 worth of power from the region’s grid to power his rigs.

The man, a 39-year-old farm owner, used a series of illegal connections to link his devices to the republic’s power grid in an outbuilding on his property, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Komi Republic branch wrote.

In 2024, Komi Republic officials announced plans to build 15 crypto mining data centres. Construction has already begun on two of these, which are set to cost a combined total of over $28 million.

One of the centres is being built in a major industrial park and will have a capacity of 114 MW, Russian media outlet CNews reported in November. Officials say the first of the mining centres will go online by the end of the year.

Komi’s move could see the Russian Bitcoin mining industry shift away from Southern Siberia, its long-standing heartland, and further north, to parts of the country with richer energy resources and underdeveloped industrial sectors.

Illegal connections

Investigators have accused the miner of operating more than 80 ASIC crypto-mining rigs housed in a warehouse designed to store logging equipment and combine harvesters.

He used a complex connection system to bypass his property’s meters, running a power cable directly from a transformer substation, police say.

The man also failed to register his activities with the Federal Tax Service, investigators say. Under Russian law, private citizens may use only 6,000 kWh per month.

This amount, Russian media outlet RBC reported, is only enough to provide power for two or three of the most modern ASIC rigs.

The ministry said it had worked with the Federal Security Service, or FSB, to help identify and arrest the man. Officers raided the property and discovered that the rigs had been operating since August. Bailiffs have confiscated the mining rigs.

The man will face charges of breach of trust and property damage.

However, if lawmakers get their way, illegal miners will soon face stricter punishments, including possible jail time and hefty fines.

The measures will be bundled with the country’s next batch of crypto laws, which are slated for debate in the State Duma’s upcoming spring session.

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

Officers did not explain how the Bitcoin, kept on 22 USB thumb drives in a sealed vault in a police station in Seoul’s Gangnam District, had disappeared, leaving only the drives behind, South Korean newspaper Dong-A Ilbo reported.

Police only confirmed they are “investigating the circumstances surrounding the loss of confiscated Bitcoin.”

The revelations come hot on the heels of the news that prosecutors in the South Korean city of Gwangju last month admitted to “misplacing” over $28 million worth of Bitcoin confiscated from suspected online gambling operators in November 2021.

Investigations continue

Police in Seoul said they’d discovered the loss after the National Police Agency ordered an audit of all confiscated crypto held in cold wallets following the Gwangju case.

The lost Bitcoin was reportedly voluntarily submitted by a suspect during an investigation that dates back to November 2021. The investigation has since been suspended, but the cold wallets remained in police custody.

Unnamed security experts told South Korean newspaper Segye Ilbo the possibility of insider involvement could not be ruled out.

The fact that the Bitcoin had apparently been removed from the drives, leaving the devices intact, raises suspicions that someone with direct access to the cold wallets or their seed phrases may have been involved, the experts said.

The security officials called on the police and public prosecutors to “urgently and fundamentally redesign” their crypto management systems.

An inquiry in the Gwangju case has found evidence the Bitcoin was likely lost by prosecutors who had tried to use online tools to check how much Bitcoin was in cold wallet devices held in their own vaults.

Investigators say the prosecutors connected the wallets to a phishing website that had been disguised as a “cold wallet checker,” allowing criminals to steal the contents of crypto wallets.

The prosecution service says the coins were lost in August during a staff changeover. The Gwangju investigation is ongoing.

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

Writing on the platform Saturday, X’s Nikita Bier said that the feature will work via Smart Cashtags — a new function announced in January giving users live pricing information for crypto and stocks.

“We are launching a number of features in a couple weeks, including Smart Cashtags that will enable you to trade stocks and crypto directly from timeline,” wrote Bier.

I genuinely want crypto to proliferate on X, but applications that create incentives to spam, raid, and harass random users is not the way.

It meaningfully degrades the experience for millions of people — only to enrich a few people.

And yes, we are launching a number of…

— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) February 14, 2026

Bier later added in a post that the platform would not handle trade execution or act as a brokerage but was “just building the financial data tools and links”, suggesting that crypto traders would be redirected to an exchange from their X timelines.

Bier announced Smart Cashtags last month though did not reveal that the feature would help users make trades.

The latest announcement comes as Musk prepares to launch X Money, the payments arm of the social media platform. Musk has talked about bringing crypto and payments to X — formerly Twitter — since he bought the platform in 2022.

Open claw bots

Bier’s announcement came during a debate about spam and claiming fees on X.

Responding to a comment from someone saying OpenClaw developer Peter Steinberger could claim “at least $100k in fees” from people creating tokens, Bier said that X would soon ban apps creating fee pools for non-consenting users.

OpenClaw is an AI agent app. Its creator Steinberger has bemoaned being harassed by people urging him to interact with their tokens and — sometimes scammy — crypto projects inspired by his app.

“We intend to update our API policies to block apps that create fee pools for non-consenting users,” wrote Bier.

‘All the money’

Elon Musk has previously said that he wants X to rival China’s WeChat — a platform where people can get information on everything, make payments, and generally just organise their lives.

Back in 2023, Musk obtained money transmitting licenses in the US for X. A fan of memecoin Dogecoin, there has even been speculation in the past that Musk would integrate the ninth biggest cryptocurrency for transactions on the platform.

But Musk wants X to be where people do all their monetary transactions.

At a presentation this week, Musk said of X Money: “This is really intended to be the place where all the money is.

“The central source of all monetary transactions. It’s really going to be a game-changer.”

Updated, February 14: This story has been updated to include Bier’s latest comments clarifying that X will not act as brokerage.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

French publication RTL reported Friday that three hooded men tried to break into the Val-de-Marne home of David Prinçay, the executive, on Thursday.

When they realised he wasn’t at home, they stole two phones and left before being caught by police later in the day, according to reports. A woman was also hurt in the incident after the attackers searched the wrong home, RTL added.

“There are reports circulating regarding one of our French employees. We can confirm that he and his family are safe and actively working with law enforcement,” Binance said in an emailed statement.

“We understand that three individuals connected to this matter have been arrested by authorities. The investigation remains ongoing, and we are continuing to cooperate fully,” the exchange added.

Binance would not respond to further questions from DL News and did not name which employee was targeted.

Prinçay and French cops did not immediately respond to questions.

Wrench attacks — when physical violence is used to steal crypto — surged in 2025. A tracker created by Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp counted more than 70 attacks during the year.

These attacks have haunted the crypto sphere for years, but a string of high-profile violent attacks over the past year has significantly raised the threat level for crypto investors.

And 2026 hasn’t gotten off to a good start: Lopp’s tracker has so far counted 14 incidents.

A large number of wrench attacks are happening in France, too, with 11 of 14 2026’s incidents taking place in the European nation.

Wrench attacks have happened for years but made headlines in 2025 when crooks kidnapped David Balland, co-founder of crypto hardware wallet brand Ledger, and his wife in France.

Criminals held the pair for around 24 hours before they were rescued by the French authorities.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Hi. Eric here.

Wall Street is hunting for crypto talent.

BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and CitiGroup are just some of the traditional finance players who are actively recruiting for candidates with crypto know-how, according to roles advertised on their websites.

But this is just the beginning as the financial heavyweights adopt digital assets like never before, crypto-focused recruiters say.

“When I speak with CEOs from TradFi who are now building digital assets, they consistently say the same thing: Crypto will ultimately be integrated into TradFi, not exist separately,” Sam Wellalage, founder of the recruitment agency WorkInCrypto, told me.

Indeed, Wall Street’s recruitment efforts come in a week where Goldman Sachs has unveiled that it has $2 billion worth of crypto exposure, and BlackRock scooped up an undisclosed amount of Uniswap governance tokens.

At the same time, a slew of financial heavyweights are gearing up to attend the World Liberty Forum, the crypto event organised by the Trump family’s crypto venture, next week.

US President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto policies are often credited for Wall Street’s return to digital assets. His promises to make the country the crypto capital of the world and his championing of light-touch regulations have emboldened banks, investment companies and fintech firms to explore blockchain-based businesses.

It is against this backdrop that several of these firms are now sourcing talent to bolster their digital asset teams.

“Institutional recruitment in 2026 will be about finding digital asset leaders who can operate at the intersection of capital, markets, and regulation — not just crypto enthusiasm,” Wellalage said.

At a time when the total cryptocurrency market has lost $2 trillion, or half, of its value since October, it is encouraging that firms are still looking to strengthen their digital asset teams.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao says he ‘didn’t do much’ to get Trump pardon

Binance’s co-founder Changpeng Zhao said he didn’t do much to make Trump pardon him. Tim Craig reports on the crypto mogul’s latest comments.

Bitcoin narrative woes: How Trump Fed pick Kevin Warsh will finally give price stability

In his latest column, Wolfgang Münchau argues that one of Bitcoin’s biggest problems is that it struggles to find a narrative that fits. Yet, Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve may fix that.

Robinhood crypto revenue falls 38% as CEO says not to be ‘distracted by short term’ fluctuations

Robinhood has led the wave of fintech firms that have muscled into crypto. While this provides them with plenty of opportunities, it also exposes them to risks, as Robinhood’s fourth quarter earnings showed this week. Mathew Di Salvo reports.

Post of the Week

Coinbase spent millions on its Super Bowl ad, but not everyone was impressed.

pic.twitter.com/gCGsRQm2LC

— Bold (@boldleonidas) February 9, 2026

Those critics are calling for the courts to overhaul their procedures to keep bad actors from getting away with their crimes.

The development comes as a fresh blow to the South Korean judiciary, which has recently come under fire from critics complaining of undue “leniency” in sentencing crypto fraudsters.

It also comes as experts warn that AI is enabling cybercriminals to steal even more crypto.

‘Identified with the naked eye’

The latest backlash against the courts comes after a man in his 20s managed to dupe legal professionals with falsified documents he reportedly generated using ChatGPT.

The case began when prosecutors investigated the man, who remains unnamed for legal reasons, on suspicion of running a $223,000 investment fraud scheme, the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.

Prosecutors asked the court to issue an arrest warrant. The man responded by saying he planned to compensate victims, and produced a range of documents that appeared to prove he was a wealthy and successful individual.

These included “a record of cryptocurrency holdings and transactions,” prosecutors said. The man also presented the court with a certificate showing he had passed the national medical exam and a bank statement showing a balance of around $630,000.

After receiving these documents, the court decided against issuing the warrant. The only problem? All of them turned out to be fake.

“The defendant managed to deceive judges by sending the court AI-generated images that were so sophisticated that their inauthenticity could not be identified with the naked eye,” a prosecution official told Yonhap.

Systematic change needed

Prosecutors in the city of Busan said they only discovered something was amiss with the documents when they later conducted supplementary investigations.

They followed up by checking on his account status at his bank branch, where they discovered he had just $0.016 in his bank account.

Experts said the case has exposed a major loophole in the South Korean legal system and urged the government to respond.

“There is no system in place to screen out forged documents in court,” an anonymous former judiciary member told South Korean broadcaster MBC. “Rather than basing our legal system around the good faith assumption that no one would submit forged documents to a judge, we now need to make fundamental changes to the legal system.”

The man has since been arrested on additional charges of forgery and the use of falsified official records.

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

The former Binance CEO made the comments in the latest episode of the All-In Podcast with host Chamath Palihapitiya, released on Tuesday.

In the wide-ranging interview, which included discussion about Zhao’s prosecution and time in prison, Palihapitiya asked about the controversial pardon.

“The question that some people can kinda jump to is they think, ‘What must CZ have done to try to get it.’ Do you want to put that to bed?” he asked.

“I didn’t do much,” Zhao replied. “I didn’t do anything.”

Shortly after in the conversation Zhao expanded on his seemingly conflicting replies.

“Without the pardon it’s quite hard for Binance to enter the US in a proper way,” he said.

“If the US wants to become the capital of crypto in the world, you can not have US people not be able to access the largest liquidity pool.”

Trump has pledged to make the US “the crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world.”

An alleged deal

For months, critics have alleged the Binance founder made a deal with Trump in exchange for his presidential pardon.

In November, a 60 Minutes investigation tied a $2 billion investment deal between Binance and Abu Dhabi’s MGX to Trump and his family.

Critics say the deal, which was conducted with USD1, a stablecoin issued by Trump family crypto project World Liberty Financial, was done as a favour in exchange for the pardon.

As of Tuesday, Binance custodies 89% of all USD1 in circulation, according to blockchain data platform Arkham Intel.

Binance CEO Richard Teng, and Zhao’s lawyer Teresa Goody Guillen, have both dismissed claims that the exchange helped boost USD1 before Zhao received the pardon.

Trump sympathy?

In November 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to wilfully violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to implement and maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme at Binance.

For the crime, he was sentenced to four months in prison, which he served between April and September 2024.

Zhao has since made several critical statements about his treatment by the US Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden’s administration, framing it as highly aggressive, politically motivated, and part of a broader “war on crypto.”

It’s this treatment by US authorities that Zhao said may have influenced Trump’s decision to grant him a pardon.

“The fact that [Trump] went through the Biden DoJ probably helped me a lot to get the pardon, because he could sympathise,” Zhao said. “He knows how aggressive that DoJ was.”

Political persecution

Zhao isn’t the only one to make the case he was a victim of political persecution.

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison after a jury convicted him on seven counts of fraud and money laundering in 2024, has also blamed Biden for his harsh sentence.

Yet so far, Trump has shown no interest in Bankman-Fried’s plight. Last month, the president told the New York Times that he has no plans to pardon the FTX founder.

In May, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed to drop its enforcement action against Zhao and Binance. The agency also halted or dropped cases against several other crypto companies over the past year.

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

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called the election in January, hoping to capitalise on her sky-high pre-election approval ratings. Takaichi promised to resign if her party failed to win a decisive majority.

Her gamble paid off, with the LDP winning a supermajority of two-thirds of the lower house’s seats.

“In terms of her foreign and fiscal policy, the nationalist Prime Minister Takaichi differs very much from her more centrist predecessors Fumio Kishida and Shigeru Ishiba,” said a Japanese crypto trader and securities firm employee who spoke to DL News on condition of anonymity.

“I don’t get the impression she is particularly pro- or anti–crypto in any significant way.”

With more Japanese companies flocking to crypto in recent months, industry insiders are quietly confident that Takaichi will continue to reform Japan’s restrictive crypto laws.

Tax reform plans

The Japanese cryptocurrency industry is currently focused on issues like tax reform and the efforts to reclassify Bitcoin and leading altcoins as financial investment products, rather than forms of payment, Japanese media outlet CoinPost reported.

Japan began implementing crypto reforms under the premiership of Kishida, who served as prime minister between 2021 and 2024. Kishida unveiled plans to develop web 3 and blockchain technology industries in May 2022.

Under his leadership, the LDP established web3 policy-forming taskforces. The taskforces recommended tax reform and relaxing the rules governing crypto exchanges.

The tax reform plan, as it stands, will see Tokyo introduce a flat 20% capital gains levy on crypto profits as of 2028. It also proposes allowing investors to carry their losses over to the following financial year.

Currently, crypto profits must be declared on annual tax declarations. This means higher earners can pay up to 55% of their crypto earnings to the government.

Kishida’s successor Ishiba advocated a continuation of the reform policies, and made several pro-blockchain industry statements. It was under his leadership that Japanese companies first began buying Bitcoin with their balance sheets.

Takaichi took power in October.

Despite coming from a more conservative wing of the LDP than her two predecessors, she allowed the taskforces to continue their reform-related work.

Her pre-election cabinet has also spoken about crypto in positive terms. In January, Takaichi’s Minister of Finance Satsuki Katayama said Japan’s cryptocurrency and web 3 industries were “at a turning point.”

Katayama also said the government plans to submit a tax law reform to parliament in spring 2026.

A change of government would have risked derailing these policies, CoinPost wrote, adding that industry sources have actively welcomed news of the LDP’s landslide victory.

The PM’s own comments on crypto demonstrate the likelihood of continuity in Japanese crypto deregulation.

When asked about her stance on crypto tax reform in parliament last year, Takaichi replied that her government would “respond appropriately” based on the LDP’s taskforce’s recommendations.

Japanese financial analysts said Takaichi’s plans to carry out tax cuts and suspend the 8% consumption tax levy on food could lead to higher government bond yields and a weaker yen.

In this case, CoinPost wrote in its analysis, crypto and stocks are likely to benefit from increased domestic risk appetite.

Stock market picture

History shows that when the LDP wins a majority in a lower house election, overseas investors tend to snap up Japanese stocks, Daisuke Uchiyama, a senior strategist at the securities provider Okasan Securities, told Japanese news agency Nikkei.

Other experts told the publication they expect more foreign capital to flow into the Japanese stock market in the election’s wake. That stock market includes several companies with strong connections to crypto.

But while the election has seen share prices surge in the tech sector, the picture for Japanese crypto-related companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange is currently decidedly mixed.

SBI Holdings, a securities giant with crypto mining and exchange subsidiaries, saw its share price rise by over 3% in the past five days. Monex Group, another securities player that also operates a crypto exchange, also saw 2.7% gains over the same period.

But Japanese digital asset treasuries, publicly traded companies that have used their balance sheets to buy Bitcoin and altcoins, have suffered losses in the wake of the election. Metaplanet shares are down over 9% in the past five days, with Remixpoint falling 2% in the same period.

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

The pair, who created the crypto-based social network in 2020, announced the move on their respective X accounts on Monday. It’s not clear what specific roles the pair will fill at Tempo.

“Stablecoins are a generational opportunity,” Romero said on X. “I’m excited to work with Matt Huang, Georgios Konstantopoulos and the rest of the team to make them mainstream.”

“Tempo is working on the most important problem in finance: building a global payments network that is fast, inexpensive and transparent,” Srinivasan said on X.

Farcaster, which Romero and Srinivasan led for the past five years, was acquired last month by Neynar, a startup that builds tools for Farcaster developers, as it struggled to get the product to catch on with users.

As part of the deal, Neynar took over the protocol’s smart contracts, code repositories, mobile app and Clanker, an AI token launchpad. Romero, Srinivasan, and several employees at Merkle Manufactory, the firm behind Farcaster, stepped away from day-to-day development.

After the acquisition, Romero said he plans to return all $180 million Farcaster raised to investors.

Stacking talent

For Romero and Srinivasan, the move to Tempo keeps the pair at the pinnacle of the crypto industry.

Before founding Farcaster, they both worked at Coinbase. Romero ran consumer business and international expansion as a vice president, while Srinivasan directed the crypto exchange’s engineering and product teams.

Tempo has been stacking talent in recent months.

The project, backed by fintech giant Stripe and crypto venture firm Paradigm, added former Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist to its ranks in October.

Former Optimism Labs CEO Liam Horne and Rice University Professor Mallesh Pai also joined late last year.

Tempo already counts over a dozen firms as partners, including Anthropic, Coupang, Deutsche Bank, DoorDash, Lead Bank, Mercury, Nubank, OpenAI, Revolut, Shopify, Standard Chartered, Visa, and Klarna.

In December, the project rolled out its testnet ahead of a full launch scheduled for later this year.

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

The comments came from Anatoly Aksakov, head of the State Duma’s Committee on Financial Markets.

Aksakov was responding to Russian experts who told the Russian Parliamentary Gazette that Bitcoin prices would not rise in the near future, and could drop to $40,000 next year.

“I’ve always had reservations about this sector, since cryptocurrency is not really backed by anything,” Aksakov told the Parliamentary Gazette.

“It’s a type of hype that grew out of people’s fascination with computers and the opportunity to make money by connecting PCs to the power grid. By all the fundamental laws of economics, it’s bound to collapse sooner or later.”

Despite Aksakov’s gloomy predictions, he and the government press ahead with regulation as Russia’s crypto market continues to grow beyond $13 billion.

In the same interview, the lawmaker said he was drafting a new bill to regulate Bitcoin mining firms.

Regulation plans

The lawmaker voiced his personal reservations about the long-term future, despite taking action to further legalise crypto in Russia.

“[Crypto] is a very difficult business because the market is volatile,” Aksakov said.

“If you want to make money, this is not the best market for you. No level of expertise will help, because market fluctuations depend not on objective factors, but on a multitude of subjective issues.”

Aksakov said his committee had drafted a new crypto mining bill that aims to “legalise the industry” for firms that abide by the rules.

These will include regulations for crypto exchanges, with banks set to offer their clients crypto trading services.

The bill will also propose “penalties for illegal mining and the illegal circulation of cryptocurrency,” he said.

At the end of last year, the Russian Ministry of Justice proposed giving courts the power to jail illegal crypto miners who fail to pay tax on their earnings.

Under a 2024 law, Russians are free to mine crypto in most areas, provided they do not exceed 6,000 kWh of electricity per month.

In parts of the country that have suffered energy shortages, however, mining has been banned until 2031.

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

Daily newspaper La Prensa Gráfica this week published the leader’s latest approval ratings: 91.9% of those surveyed approve of the president.

According to the survey, which quizzed 1,200 Salvadorans, 62.8% said they really approve of what the leader is doing in the country, while a total of 1.8% really disapprove of Bukele’s job so far.

¿O sea que ahora son el 1.8%? pic.twitter.com/TG9Bi4jhJ1

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) February 5, 2026

“So now they’re 1.8%?” Bukele, known for his sarcastic comments on social media, wrote on X.

But when it comes to Bitcoin, Salvadorans don’t seem enthused. The survey added that 2.2% of those interviewed say Bitcoin was the biggest failure of Bukele during his six years as president. Bitcoin wasn’t mentioned elsewhere in the poll.

The Salvadoran government’s press office did not respond to questions from DL News.

Bitcoin law

President Bukele took office in 2019 on a ticket to reduce corruption and crime in the country — once the most murderous place in the Western Hemisphere.

And it appears to have worked: homicides have been slashed since Bukele launched a tough crackdown and built a mega-prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, in the tiny country.

This week’s approval ratings show that the biggest reason Salvadorans approve of Bukele is because of the improved security situation.

The president also in 2021 debuted a Bitcoin law, encouraging citizens to spend cryptocurrency and asking businesses to accept the digital coin if they had the technological means to do so.

Though even Bukele admitted in a 2024 interview with TIME that the experiment — other than attracting the ire of major institutions like the International Monetary Fund — didn’t get the “widespread adoption we hoped for.”

Still stacking sats

Despite striking a deal with the IMF to scale back its Bitcoin experiment, El Salvador claims it is still buying one Bitcoin per day since it came up with the plan in 2022.

Bukele even said last year on X in an apparent reference to the IMF deal that his Bitcoin buys “won’t stop now” and “won’t stop in the future.”

The country’s crypto coffers can be tracked on the Salvadoran Bitcoin Office website, which show the nation is still apparently upping its digital asset holdings.

As long as Bukele’s ratings remain this high, it’s likely he’ll push ahead with his crypto ambitions unabated.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

On Thursday, Zhao submitted a pull request to the Bitcoin GitHub repository, removing herself as one of six people able to push updates to the software that underpins much of the $1.3 trillion blockchain.

It’s not clear what specifically motivated Zhao to step down. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During her time developing Bitcoin, she primarily worked on improving network efficiency, reliability, and resistance to specific attacks and inefficiencies.

Ongoing schism

Her resignation comes amid an ongoing schism in the Bitcoin development community surrounding OP_RETURN, a script opcode that allows users to embed non-monetary data into transactions.

Proponents, which include the Bitcoin Core maintainers, argue that users were already using workarounds to include non-financial data in transactions.

Other supporters say removing limits helps address emerging use cases such as layer-2 proofs, sidechains, and decentralised apps.

Yet critics oppose the idea because it shifts Bitcoin from a purely financial technology to a general-purpose data blockchain, a change they fundamentally disagree with.

In June, Zhao was criticised over her decision to finalise a change to Bitcoin Core that would relax filters on non-financial transactions.

Bitcoin Core is the most popular software for accessing the Bitcoin blockchain; it accounts for around 77% of all nodes, so when one of its features changes, it’s a big deal.

Mixed reactions

Zhao’s departure has drawn mixed reactions from Bitcoin developers and users.

“Gloria Zhao’s resignation marks the overdue end of a corrosive tenure defined by reckless protocol changes,” Justin Bechler, a prominent critic of Bitcoin Core, said on X.

Zhao’s stepping down was widely celebrated among those who are critical of expanding Bitcoin transactions beyond purely financial uses.

Yet others are mourning the loss of a dedicated Bitcoin contributor.

“Congratulations you finally did it. You bullied one of Bitcoin Core’s most prolific and consistently excellent maintainers until she gave up,” Chris Seedor, whose company makes Bitcoin wallet backup devices, said on X.

Many of Zhao’s supporters say that alleged harassment from some of her critics, coupled with the toxic environment surrounding the OP_RETURN debate, contributed to her resignation.

“This doesn’t make Bitcoin safer,” Seedor said.

“It makes it poorer, thinner, and less secure because you just taught the people who carry the protocol that sustained harassment is the price of competence.”

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

In Japan, however, a much different trend is emerging, according to Yu Oki, formerly the head of the Solana Foundation’s Superteam Japan and Allied Architects’ new “chief crypto officer.”

“Spring may be coming for DATs in Japan,” Oki told the Japanese media outlet CoinPost.

The bet, suggests Oki, is based on Japanese firms historically being able to improve on American models.

Oki’s Allied Architects, a Tokyo-based marketing firm with a market cap of around $33.5 million, is the latest to join the craze. The firm announced its plans for a digital asset treasury last month.

The company also said it will build a crypto portfolio, hinting at forthcoming purchases of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. It is yet to disclose how much money it will spend on crypto purchases.

“US DATs crashed at the end of last year, but Japanese DAT companies that emerged around the same time performed well. There’s a historical pattern where America invents something — and then Japan imports and improves it.”

Japanese firms have begun 2026 with bullish confidence, despite a wider crypto market slide.

Last month, Metaplanet, the largest non-US DAT in the world, announced it had bought $451 million worth of Bitcoin at the end of 2025.

The firm aims to hold 1% of the world’s Bitcoin supply by 2027.

Optimism in Japan

Allied Architects isn’t alone in its new year pivot.

More Japanese companies will try to reinvent themselves as crypto treasury companies in the months ahead, Shiv Shankar, CEO of the decentralised blockchain marketplace Boundless and the former head of compliance at Coinbase Japan, told DL News.

“It’s a great hedging strategy against changes in the global economic climate, especially with the yen depreciating,” Shankar said.

Shankar said Japanese firms have realised cryptoassets do not follow the same patterns as Japanese stocks or bonds. “This is exactly why crypto is becoming a serious diversification play for corporations,” he said.

Japan’s financial regulators insist that listed firms demonstrate balance sheet stability and provide proof that they use investor protection and risk management measures, Yu Hu, founder and CEO of Kaito, an AI-powered search engine for the crypto sector, told DL News.

“That naturally limits how widely Bitcoin-heavy treasury strategies can be adopted across corporate Japan,” Hu said.

Tech firms and companies with a global reach will be among those making the biggest moves in the DAT space in Japan this year, he forecasted.

Firms that can afford to take a calculated risk on crypto, rather than try to reinvent themselves as crypto companies, could also be set for a successful 2026, Hu said.

Tokyo Stock Exchange data makes grim reading for Japanese firms that have pivoted to crypto. Metaplanet has seen its share price drop by almost 17% over the past month.

Over the same period, smaller competitors, such as the energy provider Remixpoint, the fashion retailer ANAP Holdings, and the gaming firm Gumi, have seen their share prices fall by between 3% and 14%.

In the same period, by contrast, the Nikkei 225, an index of leading shares on the exchange, has risen by 5%.

Japanese firms remain undaunted by the financial weather, say experts, and will move as quickly as regulators let them.

“As regulations evolve and more banks are permitted to provide custody and operational services for digital assets, companies will be more inclined to hold tokens they actively use,” Sota Watanabe, founder of the blockchain developer Astar Network and CEO of Startale Group, told DL News.

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

Gemini, founded by billionaire crypto entrepreneurs Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, said Thursday that it was “time for Gemini to focus and double down on America.” In an SEC filing, the firm said it would be eliminating 200 jobs, or 25% of its global workforce.

In an email to customers seen by DL News, Gemini said that it is working with trading platform eToro as part of the offboarding process.

From March 5, customers in the UK, EU, and Australia will only be able to withdraw funds.

“We kindly request that you cancel any recurring orders and refrain from making any new fiat or crypto deposits in the run up to Gemini’s closure of services,” the email said. “If you have staked assets, please begin the process of unstaking them”

In January, the SEC said it would dismiss its lawsuit against Gemini, on grounds that the exchange returned customer assets as reason for the dismissal. The Wall Street watchdog in 2023 sued Gemini, alleging the exchange offered unregistered securities via its Earn programme.

A group of crypto exchanges, including Gemini, said in January that the UK banks are increasingly unfriendly towards crypto customers.

One exchange observed close to £1 billion in declined transactions.80% of customers reported having bank transfers to crypto exchanges blocked or limited.

“Blanket restrictions from the bank are designed to constrain the growth of the crypto industry,” an unnamed crypto exchange said in the report.

“No consideration of our regulatory status, actual fraud levels or genuine risks have been taken into account.”

Gemini did not immediately respond to questions from DL News about its latest decision.

On Wednesday, Multicoin sent out a letter to partners informing them that Samani will transition from a management to an advisory role at the firm, which oversees $6 billion in assets for investors.

“We don’t anticipate any disruption to the business,” the letter said.

Multicoin is one of the crypto industry’s largest and longest-running venture firms. It’s famous for being an early and highly successful investor in Solana, the $51 billion blockchain.

In an appearance on The Wolf Of All Streets podcast in December 2021, Samani said Multicoin had bought SOL tokens over three private rounds at $0.04, $0.20, and $0.23, meaning the firm is up at least 39,000% on its Solana investments.

“I have decided to step back from Multicoin,” Samani said on X. “I am still mega long SOL, mega long crypto.”

Conflicting statements

On X, Samani said he wanted to step back from his position at Multicoin to take some time off and explore new areas of technology.

Yet in a since-deleted post made hours before his resignation, Samani rattled off a cutting condemnation of the crypto industry.

“Crypto is just fundamentally not as interesting as many crypto enthusiasts wanted. Myself included. I once believed in the web3 vision. Dapps. I don’t anymore,” Samani said.

“Crypto is going higher. But all the interesting questions have been answered other than onchain confidentiality.”

Samani did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Over the past week, Bitcoin has plunged to its lowest level since November 2024, taking much of the crypto market with it.

Industry sentiment is low as regulation slows and macroeconomic conditions worsen. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index, a sentiment tracker that produces readings between 0 for extreme fear and 100 for extreme greed, registered a reading of 12 on Thursday.

Increasing SOL exposure

In addition to resigning, Samani said he plans to cash out his share of Multicoin’s Master Fund, which holds shares in Forward Industries Inc, a crypto treasury firm that buys SOL tokens.

Multicoin, along with Galaxy Digital and Jump Crypto, led a $1.65 billion private investment in Forward Industries stock, FWDI, in September.

As of the most recent public update on January 15, Forward Industries holds almost seven million SOL in its treasury, worth some $623 million.

“I will request an in-kind redemption in FWDI shares and warrants rather than in USD,” Samani said. “As a result of this process, I expect to substantially increase my personal economic exposure to FWDI.”

Samani added that he plans to remain in his role as Chairman of Forward Industries.

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

All seven suspects, five men and two women, will face charges of committing “an organized robbery on an especially large scale,” prosecutors said in an official statement.

Prosecutors said the gang also stole cash and other private property worth $33,000.

The gang was “acting on instructions from an unidentified mastermind,” prosecutors said.

Attacks on crypto holders have risen in recent months, both in Russia and elsewhere in the world.

In November, a court in Ryazan, western Russia, ordered two men to serve more than eight years each in maximum-security penal colonies after finding them guilty of stealing $171,000 worth of coins from a crypto blogger at knifepoint.

Threats of violence

Prosecutors say the robbery took place on July 9, 2025, when the two women arrived at the blogger’s apartment, posing as delivery couriers.

When the blogger opened the door, the rest of the group reportedly pushed him aside, entered the property, and physically assaulted him.

They then tied his hands and threatened him with further violence unless he revealed the password to his mobile phone and various apps, including the keys to his cryptocurrency wallet.

Eventually, the blogger handed over the details, and the group drained the wallet, sending the coins to an unidentified wallet address. Prosecutors did not say which type of cryptocurrency the blogger held.

The gang then allegedly stole two luxury watches worth a total of $26,000, as well as cash worth $4,000 and other undisclosed items.

The five men are all residents of Zhigulevsk, a town about 300 kilometres south of Kazan, prosecutors said.

The two women, meanwhile, hail from Kazan.

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