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The bill, dubbed the Parity Act, is meant to help stablecoins function more like cash by introducing a $200 de minimis exemption. That means that any stablecoin transaction under $200 would not require capital gains reporting.

Without such an exemption, using stablecoins to, say, purchase coffee would require extensive record-keeping, making such purchases impractical.

The bill also allows anyone engaged in “passive staking” or “passive validation” to defer reporting income from that activity. Currently, staking revenue is taxed at the value of crypto the moment it’s received. That pushes stakers to quickly sell their crypto proceeds — those who don’t risk paying outsize taxes if, for example, that crypto falls in value between the date it’s earned and the date it’s sold.

Crypto advocacy organisation The Digital Chamber celebrated the release of the draft bill on Friday.

“A modern tax framework is critical to keeping innovation in the US,” The Digital Chamber said in a statement on X, adding it “has led the charge through multiple tax roundtables on Capitol Hill, and we won’t stop until a common-sense framework is law.”

But the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a pro-Bitcoin think tank, took issue with the bill.

“Rather than promoting parity, this draft picks winners and losers,” the Bitcoin Policy Institute wrote in an analysis of the draft legislation.

“A person who buys a cup of coffee with bitcoin still faces a capital gains calculation. A de minimis exemption for everyday bitcoin transactions is necessary for the digital asset’s maturation as it grows into a global medium of exchange.”

It also faulted the bill’s staking language, which benefits so-called passive validators — those who don’t incur any business expenses.

“That definition structurally excludes Bitcoin miners, who by the nature of proof-of-work, incur significant costs for electricity, hardware, and infrastructure,” BPI said. “It creates a two-tier tax regime, offering deferral to stakers while leaving miners stuck with the same phantom income problem that both parties acknowledged needed fixing.”

The Digital Chamber CEO Cody Carbone said he would continue pushing for a de minimis exemption for Bitcoin.

“We need de minimis on bitcoin and will keep advocating that it’s added to this bill,” he wrote on X. “It’s just a discussion draft, not introduced yet - we’re not endorsing anything yet and will continue working daily to make sure it adds bitcoin.”

Behind-the-scenes lobbying over the bill attracted controversy in Bitcoin circles earlier this month, when Bitcoin influencers alleged US crypto exchange Coinbase had lobbied against a de minimis exemption for the original cryptocurrency.

The allegations were denied by several Coinbase executives.

The row even drew the attention of X founder turned Bitcoin evangelist Jack Dorsey, who asked Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong to confirm his colleagues’ denials.

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

FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson told the CEOs of PayPal, Stripe, Visa and Mastercard that the payment giants should not refuse customers services following reports that some people had been blocked based on their political or religious beliefs.

“It is inconsistent with American values to deny law-abiding individuals the ability to run their legitimate businesses and feed their families because they attracted the ire of rogue American officials, overzealous activists, or, more worryingly, foreign governments seeking to control public discourse,” he wrote.

Trump and his sons have decried debanking practices, claiming unfair banking practices forced them into crypto.

The president in January sued JPMorgan Chase and its CEO, Jamie Dimon, for allegedly debanking him. The bank has denied the allegations.

In a Thursday statement, Ferguson said that any debanking practices may lead to investigations and enforcement action from the regulator.

He added that the FTC in recent years had already taken action against payment infrastructure firms for “unfair or deceptive practices.”

Trump last year claimed that JPMorgan Chase cut him off as a customer before Bank of America also denied him services. The president’s sons, Eric and Donald Jr., have also repeatedly bemoaned unfair banking practices.

The Trump family-backed crypto company World Liberty Financial claims it will “unlock financial access for all by replacing the limits of traditional banking.”

Under the new president’s administration, regulators have taken a far more friendly approach to watchdogging the crypto space.

World Liberty Financial has applied for a banking licence earlier in a bid to get its stablecoin used by institutions and retail investors.

PayPal, Stripe, Visa and Mastercard all have big crypto ambitions. Each of the giants warned by the FTC has debuted a blockchain or accelerated stablecoin ambitions since Trump took to the White House.

None of the payments companies mentioned by the FTC immediately returned requests for comment.

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

David Sacks, the prominent venture capitalist, is stepping down as the administration’s so-called crypto and AI czar.

The role never existed before, and was designated as a special government employee.

SGE’s are only expected to perform temporary duties for the legislative or executive branch for no more than 130 days during a 12-month period.

He told Bloomberg on Thursday that he had “used up” his allotted time.

Now, he’s joining the president’s council of advisors on science and technology.

“I think moving forward as co-chair of PCAST, I can now make recommendations on not just AI but an expanded range of technology topics,” he said. “So yes, this is how I’ll be involved moving forward.”

The council is composed of up to 24 members and was founded in 2001 under President George W. Bush.

The council invites industry members to prepare policy suggestions, among other activities.

Sacks will be joined by several other influential members of the crypto industry, including the co-founder of crypto exchange Coinbase, Fred Ehrsam, and heavyweight technology investor Marc Andreessen, the founder of a16z.

“Of the different PCASTs that have been created, this one has the most star power of any group like this that has been created,” Sacks said.

Sacks’ crypto legacy

As America’s first-ever crypto and AI czar, Sacks is credited with repositioning the crypto industry and ending the country’s purported war on digital assets.

He executed this agenda in several ways.

Sacks oversaw the appointment of two new commissioners at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Under SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins, enforcement actions against the industry dropped 60% year-over-year in 2025, according to Cornerstone Research.

Meanwhile, the recently appointed CFTC commissioner, Mike Selig, has championed the growth of one of the industry’s breakout applications: Prediction markets.

Sacks also prepared the scaffolding to cement landmark stablecoin legislation in 2025.

The Genius Act brought stablecoins, cryptocurrencies pegged to fiat currencies, under federal supervision and provided banks and fintechs with a clear path to launching their own dollar tokens.

“Serving in President Trump’s administration and working alongside our brilliant AI & Crypto Czar David Sacks as Executive Director of the White House Crypto Council has been the honour of a lifetime,” Bo Hines said prior to leaving the administration and joining stablecoin giant Tether in August.

“Together, we have positioned America as the crypto capital of the world.”

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

Data compiled by crypto research firm Kaiko found that monthly euro-denominated stablecoin spot volumes plunged from near $200 million in early 2024 to around $100 million this year.

“Euro-backed stablecoins have collectively failed to generate meaningful trading activity despite MiCA’s regulatory framework intended to give an advantage to compliant European issuers,” Kaiko said in a report this week.

Stablecoins are a $315.8 billion market, according to DefiLlama data.

Since US President Trump signed the Genius Act last year to regulate tokens, top companies such as Visa, Mastercard, Amazon, and BlackRock have accelerated their stablecoin offerings and business ventures.

MiCA was supposed to help

The European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, or MiCA, was enacted in 2023 and sets clear rules for entities seeking to issue cryptocurrencies such as stablecoins.

But despite the comprehensive legislation, euro-denominated stablecoins still aren’t being used, according to Kaiko.

Instead, traders use dollar-denominated tokens to make their bets. Their euro counterparts “add currency conversion friction without meaningful benefits,” Kaiko said.

Case in point: Tether, the issuer of the biggest stablecoin in existence, USDT, stopped minting the euro version of its flagship cryptocurrency in 2024.

The euro-backed token EURT had low trading volume compared to USDT before it was sunset.

“While volumes are at $1.5 billion to 2 billion monthly, this pales in comparison to USD stablecoins’ $1 trillion+ monthly, roughly a 200x difference that demonstrates regulatory approval cannot create adoption without underlying demand,” the report noted.

Still time for growth?

Others still think the eurozone could compete with the US on stablecoins.

In a report last month, S&P Global Ratings said it expected the European market to surge as banks rush to keep up with the US and ultimately earn fees from institutional clients dealing in blockchain-based assets.

The credit rating agency said it expected the market to surge from €650 million to €1.1 billion by 2030 — or $749 million to $1.2 billion.

A group of 12 European banks — including UniCredit, BNP Paribas, and BBVA — have joined forces to launch a euro-denominated stablecoin, which is expected to be released this year.

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

The crypto exchange’s attack comes after Dan Jarvis, the UK’s security minister, said the new measures were designed to “keep our country safe and defeat attempts to meddle in our democracy.”

The government said that cryptocurrency donations allow bad actors to influence elections in Britain anonymously.

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While the government has signalled that a ban was coming for months in order to protect elections from foreign influence, Coinbase’s Vice President of International Policy, Tom Duff Gordon, still accused Westminster of missing the mark

“Here’s an idea, why not just allow crypto donations to UK political parties if a: they come via UK-registered crypto platforms with full KYC and AML checks and b: there is real-time electoral commission reporting,” Duff Gordon said in a statement shared with DL News.

“A blanket ban feels like a blunt instrument and not targeted at the legitimate concern here, which is identity and source of funds, not the manner of payment.”

Blow to Farage

The ban is seen as a blow to Nigel Farage’s right-wing party Reform UK, which became the first and so far the only political party in the UK to accept crypto donations last year.

Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, accused the government of trying “to stop the incredible progress of Reform.”

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The ban comes as the crypto lobby flexes its muscles on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, the industry has already deployed over $273 million to influence the outcome of the US midterms this year, according to donations data tracked by crypto researcher Molly White.

FairShake, the crypto super PAC that Coinbase is the top donor to, has been the biggest industry donor so far.

In the UK, crypto donations have played a far smaller role than in the US. The grand total of all donations to British political parties came to just under £65 million in 2025, according to the Electoral Commission. The data does not break down if the donations were made using cryptocurrencies.

Reform accepted just under £19 million in donations in 2025. Of that, at least £11 million cames from Christopher Harborne, a crypto investor and aviation entrepreneur.

Farage has been an outspoken supporter of the crypto industry. Over the years, he has made several appearances at industry conferences.

At the Zebu Live conference in London in October, 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.

Banned ads

Coinbase has attempted to influence the UK government’s views on crypto in the past.

In January, a Coinbase advert suggesting that digital assets could ease the UK’s cost of living crisis was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority.

This week, the Coinbase Institute, a think tank, published a survey that suggested that political parties, including the governing Labour Party, could attract more young voters by engaging more with the crypto industry.

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

Last year, crypto developer Michael Lewellen sued the US attorney general, seeking a court order approving his publication of noncustodial, crypto-based crowdfunding software.

Without a court order, he would face up to five years in prison, he argued.

Lewellen cited the prosecution of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm and Samourai Wallet developers Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill.

All three were charged with operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. Their cases became a cause célèbre among DeFi proponents, who say they rely on a catastrophic misunderstanding of crypto software.

Despite receiving support from every major crypto advocacy group, Judge Reed O’Connor, of the Northern District of Texas, found Lewellen’s argument “unpersuasive.”

“Disappointed to see the court dismiss my suit today,” Lewellen wrote on X. “My lawyers are exploring all options for a path forward.”

The decision comes as lawmakers’ race to finalise major crypto legislation, which is widely expected to include language protecting DeFi developers. But that bill is coming perilously close to the height of US election season, when Congressional action typically grinds to a halt.

In his lawsuit, Lewellen said he was building an Ethereum protocol “to coordinate crowdfunding campaigns for charities and other projects.”

“Lewellen’s planned cryptocurrency software will be non-custodial, meaning that it will not give Lewellen any control, possession, or direction over the cryptocurrency that users put through the software,” the lawsuit began.

“It will simply be a tool that others can use to move money, like an envelope used to move checks in the mail.”

That meant the software and its creator shouldn’t be considered money transmitters like Western Union or Venmo, Lewellen argued.

His lawsuit received supporting briefs from crypto advocacy groups such as the Blockchain Association, DeFi Education Fund, the Solana Policy Institute.

It appeared the White House was also sceptical of prosecutors’ decision to wield money transmission laws against DeFi developers — in April 2025, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a memo stating prosecutors should not pursue crypto exchanges, mixers, and “offline wallets” for “the acts of their end users or unwitting violations of regulations.”

It was a clear reference to the cases against Storm, Rodriguez, and Hill. Tornado and Samourai are both mixers that were used by cybercriminals to launder stolen crypto.

But prosecutors pressed forward. In July, Rodriguez and Hill pleaded guilty to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. Both were sentenced to five years in prison.

In August, a jury convicted Storm of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, though it couldn’t agree on money laundering and sanctions evasion charges. Storm has asked a judge to drop all three charges; prosecutors are seeking a retrial on the two that split jurors.

Judge O’Connor said Lewellen’s situation was totally unlike that of Storm and the Samourai developers.

In both those cases, prosecutors alleged the developers knew their software was being used by criminals and did nothing to stop it.

“The ‘core conduct’ of those cases is money laundering,” O’Connor wrote. “By contrast, the core conduct here would be running a business.”

That meant Lewellen hadn’t proven he was facing imminent prosecution, the judge said in his order dismissing the case.

“Hugely disappointing result,” Jonathan Schmalfeld, director of policy at the Digital Chamber, wrote on X.

“If the Blanche Memo was actually a panacea for developers’ right to create neutral code freely, [Roman Storm] wouldn’t still be fighting for his freedom. Whether through market structure or elsewhere, developer protections MUST be codified into law.”

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

In a Monday letter, Judge Lewis Kaplan noted Bankman-Fried was purportedly representing himself as he seeks a redo of the criminal trial that ended with a speedy conviction and a 25-year prison sentence.

At the same time, however, Bankman-Fried had never formally parted ways with three attorneys who have represented him in the years since his 2023 trial.

“Defendants in criminal cases have the right to represent themselves — i.e., to act pro se — or to be represented by counsel,” Kaplan wrote. “They do not have the right to do both at the same time.”

In his sternly-worded two-page letter, Kaplan ordered Bankman-Fried to state, under penalty of perjury, whether attorneys had helped him draft his request for a new trial.

It is the latest legal technicality to stymie Bankman-Fried’s long shot attempt to reverse his conviction and 25-year prison sentence. It comes just one week after Politico reported that his naked attempts to earn a pardon from President Donald Trump had fallen flat among pro-crypto lawmakers.

In February, Bankman-Fried requested a new trial, citing “newly discovered evidence.”

That evidence includes an affidavit in which a former colleague said he would have testified on Bankman-Fried’s behalf in 2023 had prosecutors not threatened retaliation.

Crypto attorney Carl Volz said the request was doomed to fail.

“I can’t recall having seen that win a case for a new trial — ever,” Volz told DL News. “It’s sort of a knee jerk, ‘I lost, I shouldn’t have lost, it’s not fair, it ain’t right’ kind of thing, which is not a strong argument.”

In a curious twist, Bankman-Fried said he would be representing himself going forward.

“The lawyers he was using at trial are expensive, and while his family has some money, it’s a lot of money to file a new motion,” Volz said.

“If he knows it’s a long shot, then why pay 50 grand or 100 grand to somebody to make a long shot argument when you could just do it yourself?”

But the request was filed by his mother, Stanford University professor Barbara Fried. In a cover letter accompanying her son’s request, she said she was submitting the documents because he is currently imprisoned.

Prosecutors have opposed the request. On March 12, Barbara Fried filed another document on her son’s behalf, this one requesting additional time to respond to prosecutors. Again, she cited the challenge of submitting court documents from prison.

Kaplan wasn’t having it.

“The Court of course understands that Ms. Fried is the defendant’s mother, was trained and practiced as a lawyer, and has taught at Stanford Law School,” he wrote. “Nevertheless, with no disrespect, she lacks standing to file papers or seek relief in this case.”

Bankman-Fried submitted a letter making the same request. But its authenticity was quickly disputed by prosecutors.

First, the letter was sent by mail carrier FedEx — a service that inmates aren’t allowed to access, according to prosecutors.

Second, while it was purportedly sent from a prison in the Los Angeles neighborhood of San Pedro, FedEx tracking information shows it was picked up and shipped from Palo Alto or Menlo Park, California — cities that abut the Stanford campus in northern California.

Kaplan said those facts “enhanced” his concern as to the legality of Bankman-Fried’s filings, though he declined to address the issues flagged by prosecutors.

Kaplan gave Bankman-Fried an April 13 deadline to respond to prosecutors and an April 15 deadline to provide an affidavit stating whether attorneys helped him draft his request for a new trial.

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

The Bank of Korea wants to hire 10 new employees, an undisclosed number of whom will need experience in the crypto industry, South Korean media outlet EToday reported.

At least one of the new experts will work as a “digital assets market analyst” as of July, the BOK wrote in an official notice.

The hirings and CBDC pivot come in the wake of the government’s decision to nominate a known stablecoin-sceptic, the Bank for International Settlements Monetary Economy Bureau chief Shin Hung-song, to the BOK’s governorship.

Experienced hires

Upon joining the BOK, the new digital asset hires will be tasked with researching and analysing a range of key issues in the crypto space, EToday wrote.

These will include the impact cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and tokenised assets can have on financial stability, as well as domestic and international regulations.

The South Korean financial and payment systems are changing rapidly, as crypto and stablecoin adoption gather pace.

The BOK is responding by revamping its internal systems ahead of incoming legislation that will lift a long-standing ban on cryptocurrency and stablecoin issuance on South Korean territory.

The government wants tech firms and banks to launch won-pegged stablecoins to help them facilitate cross-border payments.

Applicants to the BOK’s new posts must possess at least five years of on-the-job experience, the bank said.

Reviving Project Hangang

The hiring spree comes a week after the BOK announced it was restarting its central bank digital currency initiative, dubbed Project Hangang.

The BOK wound down Project Hangang last year following a two-year pilot, claiming trial participants found the coin too inconvenient to use when compared to existing cash-free pay platforms.

“The digital won is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist in South Korea,” a pilot participant who asked to remain anonymous told DL News in 2024.

But rather than focusing exclusively on creating a blockchain-powered version of the Korean won for retail usage, the latest iteration of Project Hangang appears to focus on the digital won’s potential in the government and business spaces.

The government plans to distribute 25% of its subsidies using the digital won by 2030, and will start making CBDC pilot payments “in the first half of 2026,” a BOK official told South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo.

“The services developed through Project Hangang could serve as a preview for the future introduction of won-pegged stablecoins,” Kim Dong-sub, the head of the BOK’s Digital Currency Planning Team, told the newspaper. “Rather than competing with one another, [stablecoins and the CBDC] will be synergetic.”

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

In a December lawsuit, Snyder accused Chicago-based Jump Trading, several of its subsidiaries, and two of its executives of market manipulation, defrauding investors, self-dealing, and more.

Now, Jump says the lawsuit is a “transparent attempt” to dodge a $4.4 billion fine levied by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2024.

Snyder “concocts a host of claims designed to pass the buck of Terraform’s liability to the SEC and Terraform’s creditors from Terraform to Defendants,” Jump said in its response.

Terraform Labs is the company behind one of the most infamous projects in crypto history: the Terra blockchain and its twin cryptocurrencies, UST and LUNA. Their spectacular collapse in 2022 set off a chain reaction that culminated in the bankruptcy of FTX and a regulatory crackdown targeting crypto companies large and small.

In total, Terraform Labs and its cocksure founder, Do Kwon, cost investors some $40 billion in losses.

Terraform and Kwon were sued by the SEC in 2023. A year later, they were found guilty and ordered to pay fines of $4.4 billion and $204 million, respectively. In a separate criminal case, Kwon pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud. In December, a US judge sentenced him to 15 years in prison.

While Kwon begins a lengthy prison sentence, the Jump executives who allegedly helped him perpetuate his fraud have evaded accountability, according to Snyder’s lawsuit, which seeks $4 billion in damages.

“This case is about a secretive trading firm that defrauded investors and contributed to one of the largest cryptocurrency collapses in history,” it reads. “This lawsuit is how the estate of Terraform and the victims of Jump’s wrongful conduct will finally hold Jump responsible.”

The alleged fraud began when UST lost its peg to the US dollar in 2021.

Jump helped Terraform defend UST’s peg, buying enormous quantities of the token in an attempt to bolster its price, according to court records.

But executives at both companies kept their effort a secret, as admitting that UST was unstable would have negatively impacted Jump’s investment in the affiliated LUNA token, Snyder alleged.

In a lengthy response filed Monday, Jump said the lawsuit lacked key details and should be dismissed.

For example, the lawsuit refers to eight separate, but affiliated entities as “Jump,” “failing to plead with particularity what any specific Defendant did,” the response reads.

Moreover, the lawsuit does not state where any of the alleged violations occurred, according to Jump. Even if it had, the lawsuit was filed well after the statute of limitations.

Snyder was confirmed to lead the Terraform Labs Wind Down Trust in September 2024.

In a separate lawsuit last month, Snyder sued high-frequency trading firm Jane Street, its co-founder Robert Granieri, and two employees named Michael Huang and Bryce Pratt.

The heavily redacted lawsuit claims that the trading firm was able to profit from “trades that would have been impossible without inside information to which it had unique access.”

Jane Street, which earned more than $24 billion in the last quarter of 2025, told the Wall Street Journal the complaint was “desperate” and said it would defend itself “vigorously against these baseless, opportunistic claims.”

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Email him at aleks@dlnews.com.

The San Salvador-based company said Tuesday that the audit would be the “biggest ever inaugural audit in the history of financial markets.”

“At a scale rarely seen outside the world’s largest sovereign institutions and encompassing a uniquely complex mix of digital assets, traditional reserves, and tokenised liabilities, this audit marks a defining moment not only for Tether, but for the evolution of modern finance itself,” the company said in a statement.

The news comes as Tether is making overtures to push into the US market. In January, Tether launched USAT, a stablecoin available to US customers.

USDT, the main stablecoin issued by Tether, may command a $184 billion market cap globally, but it hasn’t been available to US customers for years.

The announcement also comes as stablecoins are becoming more mainstream. Major companies and banks are looking into issuing the tokens after US President Donald Trump signed the Genius Act into law last summer.

Tether did not say which firm would audit its reserves, nor did it immediately respond to questions from DL News.

The Big Four accounting firms are PwC, EY, Deloitte and KPMG. None of them immediately responded to questions from DL News.

What gives?

Tether is a massive company.

Tether alone makes up over half of the total stablecoin market, according to DefiLlama.

As of December, it holds $122 billion in US Treasury bills, putting it ahead of countries like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia And Israel.

Yet, despite it being one of the most profitable companies in the world, it has been criticised for years about not being transparent enough about what backs its USDT token.

In 2021, for example, Tether agreed to no longer do business in New York after a two-year state attorney general investigation found the firm had “made false statements about the backing” of USDT.

The company did not publish reports on its reserves from 2014 to 2017. In 2022, it started to publish quarterly attestations, a less thorough review of a company’s financial statements.

Tether said USDT was backed by US treasuries and other assets, and had its reserves attested by other accounting firms.

The company’s CEO, Paolo Ardoino, told DL News in a 2024 interview that the Big Four firms were afraid to work with the crypto giant because they feared it would damage their reputations.

In a Tuesday statement, Ardoino said: “For the hundreds of millions of people and businesses who rely on USDT every day, this audit is not just a compliance exercise; it is about accountability, resilience, and confidence in the infrastructure they depend on.”

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

The $22 billion company issued several key steps on Tuesday to better monitor and block users who breach Kalshi’s terms and conditions.

In a post, Kalshi shared a new “report insider trading” button that appears under relevant markets.

To be sure, the whistleblowing functionality is just one component of a larger push from Kalshi to better police its platform.

The company said it had launched tools to preemptively block political candidates from betting on the outcome of their campaigns. Likewise, athletes and referees will be blocked from betting on event outcomes tied to the leagues they play in or arbitrate.

“No screening system is perfect, and bad actors will always try to cheat,” Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said on Tuesday. “We added a whistleblower functionality in our market page to make it easier for traders to flag potential violations.”

The new tools come amid mounting pressure from lawmakers in Washington.

Prediction market bills

On Monday, Democratic Senator Adam Schiff introduced his second bill on prediction markets.

The Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act would prohibit prediction markets from listing event contracts for sports betting-related markets. Republican Senator John Curtis also co-sponsored the bill.

“Sports prediction contracts are sports bets — just with a different name,” said Schiff. “And yet, these contracts are currently offered in all 50 states in clear violation of state and federal law.”

The first bill Senator Schiff introduced was the DEATH BETS Act on March 10, co-sponsored by California representative Mike Levin, which seeks to explicitly ban event contracts related to war, terrorism, assassination, or an individual’s death.

The bill emerged shortly after markets on Kalshi and Polymarket closed markets related to the outcome of military strikes on Iran on February 28.

Whether that bill will prove effective is up for debate.

“The same can be said of the opportunity to buy stocks, futures, options, and other products on oil or other securities whose price is correlated to war,” Harry Crane, a professor of statistics at Rutgers University, told DL News.

In total, lawmakers have brought six different bills to rein in prediction markets this year.

The Commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Michael Selig, has already issued his full-throated support of prediction markets as well as hammered home that their oversight falls exclusively within the CFTC’s jurisdiction.

“We’re in the very early stages of this industry,” Crane said. “Stakeholders have taken steps to ensure market integrity already, and those measures will only get more robust as the industry matures.”

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

Hey all, Liam here.

Prediction markets aren’t just keeping speculators busy — they’re becoming top of mind in Washington.

A slew of new bills is flooding the US capital, all targeting various aspects of the booming prediction market industry.

And all of them were introduced in the last three months.

Ritchie Torres, a New York Representative, presented the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026 in January to block federal officials from trading on prediction markets.

In February, Nevada Representative Dina Titus introduced the Fair Markets and Sports Integrity Act, which seeks to ban outright sports betting on prediction markets.

On March 5, a bill from Democratic senators Jeff Merkley and Amy Klobuchar would formally prohibit senior members of the executive branch from trading on prediction markets entirely.

Another bipartisan bill introduced on March 6 by Representatives Blake Moore of Utah and Salud Carbajal of California aims to rein in insider trading involving sensitive military secrets and democratic processes.

And finally, on Tuesday, California Representative Mike Levin and Democratic Senator Adam Schiff issued the DEATH BETS Act that would ban markets that reference terrorism, assassination, war or the death of an individual.

While they all take on the latest wagering boom, Yesha Yadav, a professor of law and associate dean at Vanderbilt Law School, says these bills zero in on two very key worries.

First, protecting the large number of retail users wagering on these platforms. Second, lawmakers are clearly interested in thwarting insiders from potentially using sensitive information to profit from geopolitical conflicts.

“The most pressing concern here is ensuring that these markets are viewed as safe and capable of protecting participants from predatory traders,” Yadav said.

Same laws, new CFTC

Polymarket and Kalshi are quickly becoming household names.

Last month, Polymarket and Kalshi posted notional volumes of $7.9 billion and $10.4 billion, respectively. Major fintech platforms, such as Robinhood, as well as traditional sports betting companies, like DraftKings, are all diverting resources to roll out equivalent offerings.

The two platforms are also different in one key way.

What people usually think of as Polymarket is its global, offshore platform, which is actually forbidden in the US. American users who attempt to access the offshore version with a virtual private network can even have their accounts revoked.

The company is slowly rolling out a US version after it acquired the derivatives exchange and clearinghouse QCEX for $112 million in 2025.

Kalshi, on the other hand, is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

That’s important because some academics argue that most of the bills circulating in Washington would be redundant. The CFTC already has insider trading laws baked into its mandate, and what they are actually targeting is an offshore platform.

Plus, Michael Selig, the new commissioner, has been very clear that prediction markets already fall well within the agency’s jurisdiction.

“The Commodity Exchange Act gives CFTC authority to regulate these markets however it determines is in the public interest,” Harry Crane, a professor of statistics at Rutgers University, told DL News. “That’s a big reason why the primary examples that are being cited are not from CFTC-regulated markets.”

Others agree that the law may be the same, but prediction markets have exploded in popularity in the last two years.

Likewise, the Commodity Exchange Act may be too vague to effectively rein in the emergent behaviour on these platforms.

“Whatever the law was two years ago, it is the same law today,” Andrew Verstein, a professor of law at UCLA, told DL News.

“But prediction markets have exploded in the meantime. Something has to change on the legal side, both to authorise the market if we want to bless it, and to address its new challenges.”

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

So say media outlets in the East Asian nation, after President Lee Jae-myung nominated the Bank for International Settlements’ Monetary Economy Bureau chief Shin Hung-song for the governorship of the Bank of Korea on March 22.

“Won-denominated stablecoins are a shortcut to effectively neutralising existing foreign exchange regulations,” Shin said in August, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported. “By exchanging stablecoins for dollar-denominated cryptocurrencies on blockchain protocols, [South Korea] could open a channel for capital outflow.”

Some of South Korea’s biggest, stablecoin-keen firms have been left in the lurch for months as government officials talk up imminent stablecoin legislative developments.

Pre-election promises

Shin “will step back from his duties with immediate effect” following his selection as BOK nominee, the BIS wrote in a statement.

Observers are waiting to see if Shin will change his tune on stablecoins after taking the helm at the BOK, Yonhap wrote.

Lee made won-pegged stablecoin issuance a key manifesto issue ahead of his election last year. But so far, the BOK has resolutely stood in the way of his governing party’s attempts to launch legislation.

Unnamed industry insiders said it was “a matter of great interest” to see what stance he would take on stablecoins.

A BIS report, published last year, warned that “stablecoins do not fulfil the role of stable currency.”

“Due to a lack of regulation, they could pose risks to financial stability and monetary sovereignty,” the report’s authors wrote.

South Korea’s top tech firms want to issue won-denominated coins to help them boost cross-border trade.

But the BOK says that allowing them to do so could undermine its efforts to control fiscal policy.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is trading at $68,306 on Sunday, down by over 3% in the past 24 hours.
• Ethereum prices have fallen to $2,073 in the past day, a 24-hour drop of almost 4%.

What we’re reading

• Hyperliquid’s S&P 500 market quickly hits $100m in just one day. Here’s what to expect next — DL News
• ‘It’s negative for Bitcoin’ – price slides below $70,000 on Iran long war fears — DL News
• Oil. That’s it. That’s what matters. — Milk Road
• Polymarket says it deals in truth, but its social feeds are filled with falsehoods —New York Times
• Crypto firms are slashing jobs — and they’re mostly citing the same reason — DL News

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

Language in the Clarity Act related to the digital tokens could be changed to “prevent widespread deposit flight”, senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks told Politico on Friday.

Alsobrooks added she thought the agreement in principle would not only prevent deposit flight but “protect innovation” in the US.

The comments come as crypto executives, US banking representatives and regulators hash out the Clarity Act at the White House and US President Donald Trump urges them to get the legislation over the line.

Banks holding Clarity hostage?

The bill, which aims to set in stone digital asset regulation, has been in a deadlock over stablecoins and the yield they will potentially pay customers.

Crypto industry players — including the US’ biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase — want to pay their customers rewards on the tokens they hold.

But banking representatives have warned they could lose their deposit base as a result as customers flock to more attractive offers from crypto exchanges.

Coinbase pulled support for the bill in January. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon this month said crypto companies like Coinbase should be regulated like banks if they want to pay stablecoin rewards.

Trump sided with the crypto industry this month when he demanded the bill get passed.

“The Banks should not be trying to undercut The Genius Act, or hold The Clarity Act hostage,” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

“They need to make a good deal with the Crypto Industry because that’s what’s in best interest of the American People,” he added.

DL News reached out to Senator Alsobrooks and Tillis for comment.

More crypto-friendly legislation

Clearer crypto guidance arrived this week after the US Securities and Exchange Commission issued a landmark interpretation of federal securities laws.

Wall Street’s top regulator’s new guidance put cryptocurrencies into two categories: tokenised securities and so-called non-security crypto assets.

Assets like XRP and Solana were finally categorised as commodities.

The new rules will unlikely be overturned, crypto lobbyists told DL News.

Since President Trump took the White House, a number of pro-crypto bills have been signed and the SEC has taken a markedly different approach to watchdogging the space.

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

Hi. Eric here.

On Tuesday, Paul Atkins gave the crypto industry a late Christmas gift.

The Securities and Exchange Commission chair issued a landmark interpretation of federal securities laws, providing long-sought clarity on which blockchain-based assets count as securities and which ones don’t.

“The SEC’s persistent failure to provide clarity in this question is over,” Atkins, a longtime crypto supporter, said in a speech at the DC Blockchain Summit.

Vitally, the new taxonomy considers Bitcoin, Ether, Solana and XRP to be digital commodities and not securities.

It’s a huge win for the crypto lobby. For years, the industry has argued that cryptocurrencies aren’t securities, but novel instruments and thus shouldn’t be subjected to the agency’s arduous policing.

Former SEC Chair Gary Gensler spent the bulk of his tenure disagreeing with that notion. Yet, with him stepping down from the role before US President Donald Trump could keep his promise to defenestrate Gensler, the SEC was primed to see things the industry’s way.

Since taking office, Atkins has steered the agency away from the crypto crackdown creeds of the Gensler era.

On the face of it, the industry just got everything it wanted. However, the question is for how long it can keep it.

Just like Atkins has pushed the regulator away from Gensler’s hardline stance, a new SEC chair could overturn the new crypto taxonomy. Atkins’ term as SEC commissioner ends in 2031.

Atkins acknowledged that the only way to future-proof his taxonomy is to write it into law.

“Only Congress can ensure that regulation in this area is future-proofed through comprehensive market structure legislation,” Atkins said.

Here’s the rub — it is unclear whether lawmakers will be able to get law approved before the crucial midterm elections in November.

The Democrats, who are often seen as more crypto-sceptic than their Republican counterparts, are likely to retake Congress, according to most polls. If that happens, legislative work on Capitol Hill will grind to a halt.

That gridlock is unlikely to end before the 2028 presidential election. It’s uncertain that whoever replaces Trump will follow Atkins’ lead on crypto.

Polymarket punters only give the Clarity Act a 63% chance of being signed into law in 2026.

And if lawmakers manage to break their standstill over the Clarity Act, the landmark crypto bill that’s been locked in legislative limbo for months, there are no guarantees that their compromise will align with the new SEC guidelines.

Even so, crypto lobbyists told Aleks Gilbert this week that they aren’t worried. Cody Carbone, head of crypto advocacy group the Digital Chamber, said that the signals he’s been getting from congressional leaders are that they are very aligned with the SEC.

“I don’t see any opportunity for Democrats to say, ‘Oh, we didn’t agree with what the SEC did,” Carbone said.

And on Capitol Hill, senators are busy discussing how to get the Clarity Act over the finishing line.

“We’ve come too far to go back to regulatory uncertainty,” Cynthia Lummis, senator from Wyoming and crypto champion, said on Friday. “Digital assets are the future and it’s time America gives them the environment they need to thrive.”

Bungled $50m Aave trade highly unlikely to be money laundering, experts say

When a crypto trader accidentally swapped $50 million for $37,000 last week using a decentralised finance app, onlookers were flabbergasted by the mistake. Some worried it may’ve been a case of money laundering. But, as experts told Tim Craig, that’s not the case. Probably.

Thugs slashed crypto worker’s mother with box cutter, demanded $9m to stop

Police are coming down hard on a wave of violent attacks against crypto investors and their families, as Tim Alper reports.

Fed zaps Bitcoin investors’ risk appetite. Here’s what to expect next for the price

The Federal Reserve’s hawkish tone zapped investors’ appetite for risky assets like Bitcoin. Here’s what markets watchers expect will happen next. Check out Lance Datskoluo’s report.

Post of the Week

Polymarket announced the opening of a new bar. Crypto Twitter remained unimpressed.

For men who love sports bars, but wish they attracted fewer women. https://t.co/L5KH3WNAvZ

— Gaeten Dugas (@GaetenD) March 18, 2026

After all, regulators come and go with every presidential election. Laws, however, are much harder to change.

That means forthcoming market structure legislation could rain on crypto’s parade if it were more restrictive than the SEC’s token taxonomy, which was met with universal acclaim in crypto circles when it was announced on Tuesday.

But Cody Carbone isn’t worried.

The SEC and congressional leaders currently negotiating market structure legislation are “very aligned,” Carbone, the head of crypto advocacy group the Digital Chamber, told DL News.

“The SEC has been providing technical assistance to Congress as they draft this bill every step of the way, and a lot of what the bill would do would be directing the SEC to release guidance like this,” he said.

“I don’t see any opportunity for Democrats to say, ‘Oh, we didn’t agree with what the SEC did.’”

Détente

Senators are racing to finalise key provisions of market structure legislation known as the Clarity Act. Aptly named, the purpose of the bill is to clarify when a crypto asset is subject to SEC purview, and when it is subject to CFTC purview.

Regulators from both agencies have long claimed jurisdiction over crypto markets, though Atkins and his employee-cum-peer, CFTC Chair Mike Selig, have committed to working in tandem to “help unlock the full promise of these innovations,” as Selig put it during an appearance at an industry conference in Washington, DC this week.

“For too long, the two agencies have been unable to work together on basic things like definitions, interpretations,” Selig said. “[The SEC’s] burying the hatchet with the CFTC, I think this started months before I came into office at the CFTC, but we’re going to continue the effort.”

The token taxonomy is, perhaps, the most significant product of this détente. Technically speaking, it is an interpretation of federal securities laws that lays out rules for issuers of virtually all crypto assets.

It creates four categories of non-security crypto assets — digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools, and payment stablecoins — though their issuers may be required to follow federal securities laws under certain circumstances.

Only one type of crypto asset, tokenised securities, automatically falls under SEC purview according to the agency’s interpretation of securities laws.

The interpretation received universal acclaim from the industry.

“To really appreciate how momentous this is, you have to have lived through the Gensler years, which I did,” Steve Yelderman, general counsel at Etherealize, told DL News, referring to Gary Gensler, the SEC chair that preceded Atkins.

“I was litigating at Coinbase against the SEC and we were, like, literally begging for guidance.”

Carbone agreed.

“Now, if you’re going to issue a token in the United States, you know who your regulator is. You know what you need to do to be properly regulated,” he said.

“There is no more guessing. There is no more finding your token in an enforcement action, being listed as a security or listed as a commodity when you didn’t expect that. It’s what we’ve been asking for for so long, so to see that come out here yesterday was incredible.”

‘Close to perfect’

The guidance wasn’t just useful because it was clear, though. It was also very friendly to crypto entrepreneurs.

“This is as close to perfect as I could have imagined,” Carbone said.

Under Gensler, the SEC alleged in lawsuits that major cryptocurrencies were securities, a classification that comes with enormous responsibility for an asset’s issuer.

The agency’s guidance this week specifically noted that Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, XRP, Doge, and other major cryptocurrencies would be treated as digital commodities.

The 68-page guidance document published by the SEC contains dozens of details that crypto attorneys will surely scrutinise over the coming weeks. So far, Yelderman likes what he’s seen.

“One of the things that this guidance does really well is give examples of how you could have an investment contract that then ends,” Yelderman said — in other words, when the person or company behind a non-security crypto asset is free of their obligations to the SEC.

For example, an entrepreneur might raise money through an initial coin offering to build a specific crypto product. The tokens that entrepreneur sold might be subject to securities laws, according to the SEC. But that could end once the entrepreneur has delivered on his or her promises.

“It’s a really simple example, but it was something that the prior SEC struggled to articulate as a possibility,” Yelderman said.

Despite their excitement over the SEC’s guidance, crypto advocates say market structure legislation is still necessary.

“It’s unacceptable to me that they won’t be able to find consensus and get a bill done,” Carbone said.

“If we don’t get a bill done, then you’re not making policy permanent. You’re leaving it up to elections, and you’re leaving it up to the future administrations. You don’t want that. It doesn’t give the founders any clarity.”

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

Moscow’s Presnensky District Court found the man, Grigory Muluzyan, guilty of fraud “on an especially large scale,” the city’s prosecution service reported.

“Victims handed over their money to Muluzyan in cash during personal meetings at his office in Moscow,” prosecutors told the court. “He tricked them into believing they could increase their income by investing in cryptocurrency.”

The sentence highlights the growing threat of crypto-related crime. As the popularity of crypto continues to rise rapidly in Russia, fraudsters are taking advantage of the hype around Bitcoin and other tokens by devising increasingly sophisticated schemes.

‘Guaranteed rewards’

Derevyanko is the star of scores of hit Russian films and drama series. In 2020, he won a Golden Eagle Award for his role in the series “House Arrest.” The Golden Eagles are Russia’s equivalent of the US Academy Awards.

The court heard that Muluzyan ran a range of crypto fraud schemes from December 2021 to January 2023.

He told five high-net worth clients, including Derevyanko, that he was “a crypto investment expert,” prosecutors said.

Muluzyan promised all his clients high returns on their stakes and guaranteed monthly earnings.

The court heard he provided them with false information about his business operations, and said he had access to “unique tools” that helped him ensure all his crypto investments were profitable.

Derevyanko handed the fraudster a total of $3 million after selling his property holdings, Russian media outlet RBC reported.

The other victims were identified as the professional middleweight boxer Alexey Semykin, a leading movie director, and a married couple.

Muluzyan initially paid his victims what he said were “interest payments,” but these quickly dried up, the court heard.

Crime crackdown

Police initially estimated the damages incurred at $4.6 million when they launched a criminal case against Muluzyan in 2023.

By the time of his arrest in 2024, prosecutors explained, he had begun repaying his victims and “partially admitted his guilt.”

However, $1.4 million worth of the embezzled funds remained unaccounted for, the court heard.

Prosecutors have vowed to clamp down on crypto-related crime, with a court in Omsk jailing three people for robbing a Russian citizen of their cash and crypto at knifepoint earlier this month.

Politicians have also warned that some scammers are posing as fundraisers for Russians who want to give humanitarian aid to people in Iran.

Scammers have asked for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP donations to buy food, blankets, and portable gas heaters.

However, they are actually pocketing the coins they receive, All-Russia People’s Front officials said this month.

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

The attack, in Haute-Savoie, followed an increasingly familiar and gruesome playbook.

The victims were “bound with heavy-duty tape,” and the attackers “inflicted a head wound” on the man, a retired doctor, officers told French newspaper Le Dauphiné Libéré. They also “cut his wife’s back several times” with a box cutter, police said.

The charges come as police say they are closing the net on gangs of attackers who use violence, kidnapping, and coercion to steal from crypto holders.

While police have had some success in their recent crackdowns, many suspects remain at large as crypto kidnapping cases continue to balloon in France.

Detectives in the affluent town of Versailles are still hunting three men accused of forcing a couple to send them about $1 million worth of Bitcoin at knifepoint. The charges follow the arrest of a teenager in relation to an attack in Saint-Genis-Pouilly, where another crypto influencer’s fathers was doused with petrol.

Two-day ordeal

The Haute-Savoie case began on January 14, when a gang of masked individuals burst into the retired couple’s house in a small, unnamed hamlet near Sallanches.

The gang reportedly abducted the duo and drove them to an unknown location. Their target was their son, who police said works in the crypto industry.

The attackers filmed themselves attacking the elderly couple, and threatened more violence if their son did not pay a $9.2 million ransom.

Police did not say if the couple’s son paid this ransom. But on January 16, the attackers released the couple near Montélimar, in the Drôme region.

The National Prosecutor’s Office’s organised crime department told Le Dauphiné Libéré the group of arrestees included six men and one woman.

All suspects are being held in custody, a spokesperson said.

They all face charges of criminal conspiracy, organised crime, money laundering, and extortion.

Police said the case remains active as detectives continue their search for possible accomplices.

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

The CFTC’s letter announced that the agency ha issued a no-action position to Phantom’s plan to let users access regulated derivatives markets, a category that includes prediction market provider Kalshi.

“We proactively engaged with the CFTC to seek clarity on how a non-custodial interface like Phantom could offer access to regulated markets through a registered partner, without acting as an intermediary that needs its own registration,” Phantom wrote in a blog post explaining the CFTC’s decision.

“Rather than building first and seeking forgiveness later, we took a different approach to give our users safe and reliable ways to access traditional financial markets.”

But it has little to do with crypto, attorneys cautioned. That’s because Phantom’s wallet would merely serve as the front door to a regulated, custodial derivatives market, according to the CFTC’s letter.

“It’s not really about a self-custody wallet,” said one crypto attorney, who spoke to DL News on the condition of anonymity. “It’s really about a custodial situation in which custodial wallets are connected to … registered entities. It matters. It’s just not a DeFi thing or self-custody thing.”

Even Phantom attempted to temper expectations in its blog post, saying the letter “does not cover DeFi derivatives or tokenised prediction markets.”

Still, crypto attorneys said it was a positive, if modest development for crypto wallet providers.

“Still useful guidance on what a relatively neutral frontend can do,” Jason Somensatto, director of policy at crypto think tank Coin Center, wrote on X. “And I’m guessing we see more guidance or rulemaking on these issues.”

Miller Whitehouse-Levine, CEO of the Solana Policy Institute, agreed.

“The broader principle is, of course, relevant to a billion other contexts outside of the underlying activity being a DCM prediction market-type thing,” he told DL News.

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

In fact, analysts have discovered that the payments even doubled after Milei became president.

Libra was a cryptocurrency promoted by Milei in February 2025, that claimed to support small and medium sized businesses in the country. Traders bought the token in droves, causing it to spike, only for insiders to sell and cause the token to plummet within hours. The creators made away with millions in profits.

Computer forensics recovered from Novelli’s phones show he began paying Milei in 2021 for teaching cryptocurrency courses and promoting his investment firm, according to reporting from Argentine media outlet La Nación based on official court filings.

The payments started at $2,000 per month while Milei served as a national deputy. By April 2024, four months after Milei became president, the amount had jumped to $4,000 — paid to his sister and chief of staff, Karina Milei.

These revelations add another layer of shade for Javier Milei, who finds himself embroiled in a scandal that began in February 2025 when he promoted a memecoin dubbed Libra that collapsed shortly after launch.

Last Friday, forensic evidence linked messages by Javier Milei to the memecoin’s promoters minutes before and after the launch, reigniting the case.

The incident triggered congressional investigations and criminal probes into whether the Argentine president knowingly participated in a crypto scam.

Milei has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

The first scandal

Novelli began paying Milei in late 2021 to teach Zoom classes on financial education and cryptocurrencies for his company N&W Professional Traders, according to messages recovered by Argentina’s Directorate of Technological Support for Criminal Investigation.

By August 2022, Novelli was offering crypto trading courses “plus Milei’s class” as a key selling point.

Notably, forensic evidence shows that Milei also promoted Vulcano Game, a token launched by Novelli in late 2021. On February 18, 2022, Milei posted on social media that the project was “very interesting” and showed a “sustainable economic diagram over time, unlike the vast majority.”

Vulcano Game collapsed shortly after amid allegations of fraud.

Monthly payments established

By mid-2023, as Milei campaigned for president, he and Novelli formalised a payment arrangement.

On June 22, 2023, Novelli told his secretary — saved in his phone as Ara Bosque — to set aside $2,000 “for Milei’s secretary,” according to recovered audio files.

To finance those payments, Novelli sold USDT for cash. On July 5, 2023, he asked Ara to bring “that stack” of bills for Milei, reported La Nación.

On August 1, 2023 — twelve days before Argentina’s primary elections — Novelli messaged his secretary: “We have to pay Milei’s $2,000 as always.”

Later, two days before the primary vote, Ara confirmed: “The dollar payment to Milei has already been made?”

“Yes!” Novelli replied.

After the presidency

In November 2023, Javier Milei won the presidency of Argentina.

Two days later, Novelli posted an Instagram video of the president-elect promoting N&W Professional Traders courses as “one of the most important academies in Latin America.”

As president, Milei continued to receive payments from Novelli — which apparently doubled.

On April 2, 2024, four months into Milei’s presidency, Novelli told his secretary in a recovered audio message to gather “$4,000 for Karina” — referring to Karina Milei, the president’s sister and chief of staff.

Monetising the presidency

By September 2024, Novelli was leveraging his presidential access for business.

On September 20, 2024, Novelli met with Milei at the Casa Rosada and took a selfie, which he sent to his team.

“Awesome,” they replied.

Novelli used the meeting to promote the Tech Forum, a Buenos Aires-based event he was organising with his business partner Manuel Terrones Godoy.

Milei spoke at the Tech Forum conference in October 2024, where he met Julian Peh, CEO of KIP Protocol, who would later also become entangled in the Libra scandal.

Milei also met with Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, who later accused Novelli and Terrones Godoy of demanding money in exchange for access to the president.

Thirteen months after the Libra collapse that triggered criminal investigations, Milei still appears in N&W Professional Traders’ course curriculum alongside Novelli as part of the N&W instructor team.

The forensic evidence paints a picture of a years-long financial relationship between Argentina’s president and the lobbyist at the center of a memecoin scandal that left thousands of investors with losses.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

“It feels like the big momentum is finally on our side,” Scott, the chair of the Senate’s Banking Committee, said onstage at the DC Blockchain Summit.

“I believe that this week we will have the first proposal in my hands to take a look at.”

The Clarity Act would create a long-sought regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies in the US. It passed the House of Representatives with bipartisan support in July. But it stalled in the Senate after banks pressed lawmakers to include language preventing crypto exchanges and other companies from paying interest on customers’ stablecoin holdings.

That infuriated crypto companies, some of which are among the largest donors in US politics. Scott pulled a scheduled vote on the bill at the 11th hour, and the ensuing deadlock has threatened to sink the bill entirely.

Scott’s optimism came just hours after House colleague Dusty Johnson, a Republican from South Dakota, marvelled at the Senate’s plodding pace during his own appearance at the same conference.

“I don’t get it,” he said ruefully. “We really are running out of time.”

Election woes

The statement comes ahead of the key midterm votes in November.

Those congressional elections could see Democrats retake both chambers of Congress, a development that would likely spell the end of major crypto legislation. A split House would grind any legislative work to a halt until the 2028 elections.

“I don’t know what Congress will look like next year, but I do know we’re gonna lose a number of key players,” Johnson said.

He said a handful of Democrats need to buck party leadership in order to cut a deal.

“We are still looking for three or four key Democrats on the committees of jurisdiction to really just tell their leadership we will absolutely get this done,” he said. “And of course, the Republicans then need to be willing to give a little too, but I think it does start with having the same kind of critical mass of deal-cutting Dems in the Senate that we were blessed to have in the House.”

Senators have been working on ethics language in the bill, according to Scott. Democrats have insisted that any bill include language barring elected officials — including the president — from owning or launching crypto companies while in office, provisions that Republicans have been loathe to include.

Senators have been hammering away at two other issues, Scott added: how to prevent cybercriminals from laundering money through DeFi protocols, and the lack of Democratic representation on the US’ historically bipartisan financial regulators.

“The good news is those issues seem to pale in comparison to the [stablecoin] rewards issue,” Scott said. “But they’re still very important, outstanding issues that we are nibbling away at.”

But the industry needs to be willing to cut a deal too, according to Johnson.

“Don’t move the goal posts,” he said. “I know that there are a few more things that y’all want, but the second people get the sense that the store is open, it just sets the whole process back six months.”

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi reporter. Have a tip? Reach out at aleks@dlnews.com.

Broadly speaking, the new guidance sorts crypto assets into two categories: tokenised securities and so-called non-security crypto assets.

“It’s of profound importance, and it’s what we’ve been asking for from the agency for 10 years before appealing to Congress,” Miller Whitehouse-Levine, the founder and CEO of Solana Policy Institute, told DL News.

The crypto industry has long demanded clarity regarding the legal status of cryptocurrencies, arguing they are an entirely new type of financial asset that doesn’t neatly fall into the categories described by existing, century-old regulations.

“I am pleased to announce that the SEC’s persistent failure to provide clarity on this question is over,” SEC Chair Paul Atkins told a packed auditorium at the DC Blockchain Summit on Tuesday.

“As we speak, the Commission is implementing a token taxonomy and investment contract interpretation.”

The SEC’s guidance comes as Senators work to advance legislation that does just that, the aptly named Clarity Act. Passed by the House of Representatives last year, the bill stalled in the Senate amid disagreement over stablecoin interest payments and other issues.

Speaking moments after Atkins, Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott told conference attendees he expects to see an updated draft of the bill by the end of the week.

The SEC’s interpretation creates four categories of non-security crypto assets: digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools, and payment stablecoins.

Crypto assets considered digital commodities under the SEC’s new interpretation include Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, XRP, and Doge.

Under certain circumstances, however, issuers of non-security crypto assets may be required to follow onerous federal securities laws.

“Even a crypto asset that is not a security may become subject to the Federal securities laws if it is offered and sold as part of an investment contract,” Atkins said.

“Our interpretation addresses how the investment contract ends, freeing the subject crypto asset from the SEC’s statutes.

Whether a crypto asset is subject to an investment contract will depend in large part on the promises of its issuer, according to a 68-page document explaining the SEC’s interpretation of the securities laws.

“The real meat of it is the investment contract analysis, and not the token taxonomy itself,” Whitehouse-Levine said.

Industry executives, attorneys, and lobbyists celebrated the news on social media.

“Hang it in the Louvre,” Alexander Grieve, vice president of government affairs at crypto-focused venture capital firm Paradigm, wrote on X.

To be sure, any interpretation of established law can be easily overturned by a new SEC chair.

“Only Congress can ensure that regulation in this area is future-proofed through comprehensive market structure legislation,” Atkins said.

“I strongly support the ongoing bipartisan efforts on Capitol Hill to establish a durable framework for these markets.”

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Email him at aleks@dlnews.com.

The crypto industry has, once again, raised an enormous war chest in its attempt to influence US elections. As of this writing, it’s biggest test comes tomorrow, in Illinois.

As Eric Johansson noted a couple of days ago, crypto is spending big to defeat Juliana Stratton, the lieutenant governor of Illinois and a candidate in the state’s Democratic Senate primary. But she’s got some powerful allies on her side.

On Tuesday, Illinois Democrats will decide between Stratton and Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Congressman from the state’s Eighth district who “strongly supports crypto,” according to advocacy organisation Stand With Crypto. A third candidate, Congresswoman Robin Kelly, lags in the polls.

The winner of the race is all but guaranteed to defeat whichever Republican he or she faces in the November general election.

In a 36-second video earlier this month, Stratton assailed a “MAGA-backed crypto PAC” for spending $7 million to fund attack ads targeting her.

The amount of money spent attacking Stratton has since risen to $9.9 million, according to Follow the Crypto. Built by industry critic Molly White, the website tracks crypto’s influence campaign in the US.

It is just a fraction of the $271 million the crypto lobby has already spent to influence the outcome of votes this year.

As public advocacy group Public Citizen noted in August 2024, this kind of spending can bear fruit. Through the first eight months of that year, nearly half of all “corporate money” came from the crypto industry, and, of the 42 primary campaigns in which it donated, crypto-backed super PACs’ favoured candidates won 36 times.

But Stratton has powerful allies. She’s been endorsed by progressive firebrand and crypto bogeyman Elizabeth Warren. More importantly, Stratton has received the support of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who just happens to be a billionaire.

A rumoured candidate in the 2028 presidential election, Pritzker donated $5 million to Illinois Future PAC, a super PAC backing Stratton.

All told, a little more than $10 million has been raised to oppose Stratton’s candidacy, according to Follow the Crypto. The candidate has raised a little more than $4 million, and she’s benefitted from another $9 million in outside support.

Krishnamoorthi, meanwhile, has raised at least $30 million, according to Follow the Crypto.

The congressman voted for two major crypto bills last year, the Genius and Clarity Acts. And, in a Stand with Crypto questionnaire, he said he’d bought crypto, believes in self-custody, and opposes “agency-driven de-banking of lawful crypto users.”

“The government must ensure America remains the world’s hub for blockchain, including by adopting blockchain tools itself,” he wrote.

At a Friday night rally in Chicago, Warren suggested Krishnamoorthi would be an industry puppet, calling the race “the test case for whether or not they can buy whatever candidate they want for Senate in Illinois and many of the congressional seats,” the Postreported.

Krishnamoorthi rejected the notion he would be beholden to crypto.

“I don’t need to be concerned about any one person or one group of people,” he told the Washington Post. “I don’t need to somehow be concerned I’m going to anger somebody and therefore I shouldn’t do the right thing.”

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

Police warn that scammers, crypto kidnappers, and money launderers are running amok.

The latest area to report a rise in crypto crime is the Basque Country, in Northern Spain, reported Spanish media outlet Cope. Ertzaintza, the region’s police force, said the 541 crypto-related crime cases investigated last year still remain active.

Ertzaintza officers said they have invested in tools to help them monitor crypto transactions across multiple blockchain networks. They have also developed new interdepartmental teams that specialise in crypto-related crime.

The popularity of crypto continues to rise in Spain. In late 2024, a major survey found that around 11 million Spanish residents — around 4 million people — currently own or have previously held crypto.

But crime figures are also rising. Last year, Europol officials noted a rise in “increasingly sophisticated, complex, and organised” crypto-related offenses.

Police response

Ertzaintza said that among the cases it is now investigating are 13 instances of alleged crypto-powered fraud, as well as two cases whereby suspects reportedly used crypto as a money-laundering tool.

The police force said that it is also investigating suspects accused of using crypto to help them evade taxes and pay for illegal goods and services.

Police said many of these crimes are highly technical in nature and “require a cross-departmental response within Ertzaintza.”

Crypto-related investigations are now coordinated by local Ertzaintza stations, which work with a central economic crimes bureau and a new cybersecurity unit.

This new unit is staffed with 26 detectives who fight crypto fraud, as well as online child sexual abuse cases and hacks.

Ertzaintza officials warned of a sharp rise in bogus crypto investment schemes targeting Basque Country residents on social media platforms like Instagram.

Instagram threat

Scammers use data obtained via identity theft to pose as friends or acquaintances online, offering investment-related advice, police said.

All crypto trading platforms operating in Spain must be registered with the nation’s securities regulator, officers told the public.

Many scammers dupe their victims into installing apps that let criminals take control of their internet-connected devices, Ertzaintza said. This allows attackers to remotely drain crypto wallets and bank accounts.

Ertzaintza officials worked with national police in December 2024 to dismantle a major voice phishing and drug trafficking ring that used crypto to launder money.

The Catalonia-based ring used operatives in the Basque Country to withdraw funds it had laundered through bank accounts and crypto wallets.

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

Offices in Île-de-France launched a manhunt for the pair, aged 15 and 17, as well as a 35-year-old man, mobilising two police helicopters and around 100 armed special agents, French media outlet Franceinfo reported.

Police said the trio orchestrated two attacks that took place “one after the other” in two districts of Île-de-France, the large metropolitan area that surrounds Paris.

Crypto kidnapping and robbery cases are ballooning in France, with many of these crimes concentrated in affluent parts of Île-de-France.

Earlier this month, detectives in Versailles began hunting three knife-wielding men who forced a couple to send around $1 million worth of Bitcoin.

‘Carrying explosive devices’

Police say the first incident involving the teenagers took place in Essonne, a southern suburb some 30km from central Paris, at 6 am on March 10.

An unnamed crypto holder told police they thwarted an attack from two individuals who had “hidden their faces with masks.” Both of these individuals were reportedly “carrying small explosive devices,” and were attempting to enter his home.

About 30 minutes later, in the Seine-et-Marne department, some 35 kilometres away, attackers succeeded in breaking into the home of a female crypto holder. Once inside the house, they held the woman and her family captive. The thieves left the property with jewellry, but police did not say if they also stole crypto.

After receiving news of the attempted Essonne attack, police tracked down the suspects’ vehicle and began a pursuit on land and by air.

Six hours later, the officers managed to stop the vehicle. Detectives searched the car, where they found items of jewellry reported missing from the house in Seine-et-Marne.

Public prosecutors have indicted the trio on charges of extortion, organised crime, armed robbery, destruction of property, and kidnapping.

The 17-year-old and the 35-year-old have been detained in pretrial custody. A court placed the younger teen under judicial supervision pending a court hearing.

A spokesperson for the service said prosecution officials have appealed this decision.

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

Court documents filed this week show that Nader Al-Naji will not pay any penalties and that the case has been dismissed with prejudice, citing the SEC’s new crypto task force as one of the reasons for dismissal.

“On January 21, 2025, the Commission’s then Acting Chairman Mark T. Uyeda launched a crypto task force dedicated to helping the Commission develop a regulatory framework for crypto assets,” the document read.

The dismissal comes after US regulators have scrapped a number of lawsuits against top crypto companies, including Coinbase, Binance, and Ripple since President Donald Trump took power.

The SEC under new chairman Paul Atkins created a crypto task force to develop new regulatory frameworks aimed at helping the industry. The regulator has taken a remarkably more friendly approach to watchdogging the space since 2025.

Got clout?

BitClout, which debuted in 2020, was a project that wanted to convert Twitter (now X) personalities into tradable tokens. The idea was the users would be able to monetise their online followings.

Dubbed “new type of social network that mixes speculation and social media”, the project at first attracted a lot of attention, with some of some of crypto’s biggest names, including Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, and the Winklevoss twins of Gemini backing it.

BitClout had its own token, BTCLT, which was described as “like Bitcoin” by the project because of its supposed decentralized nature — “just code and coins”, the project’s whitepaper read.

But investors had early gripes with the project, complaining that the launch did not go ahead on time.

In 2024, feds then charged ex-Google engineer Al-Naji with one count of wire fraud, alleging that he defrauded investors of $3 million.

The SEC the next year alleged the project defrauded investors and that Al-Naji and others used their cash to fund a lavish lifestyle.

A criminal case against Al-Naji was scrapped by the US Department of Justice in 2025.

Neither the SEC or Al-Naji could immediately be contacted for comment by DL News.

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

Official forensic analysis of lobbyist Mauricio Novelli’s devices shows Milei and Novelli exchanged at least five messages on February 14, 2025, around 7:01 PM Argentine time — the exact moment Milei posted the Libra contract code to X, according to La Nación.

At the time, Novelli was in the US with his business partner Manuel Terrones Godoy and the main man behind the Libra operation, Hayden Davis.

The communications went “in both directions,” which suggests Milei initiated messages to Novelli, revealing a “fluid back-and-forth” between the Argentine head of state and the lobbyist, reported La Nación.

The report adds another chapter to the scandal that started in February 2025 when Milei promoted a memecoin dubbed Libra and posted a contract code on X that allowed people to buy the token.

The token launched, surged briefly, then collapsed to zero within hours, which left thousands of investors with losses, and millions in profits to the memecoin’s creators.

The incident triggered congressional investigations and criminal probes into whether the Argentine president knowingly participated in a crypto scam.

Milei has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Jony Viale interview

The forensic findings show that Novelli acted as the “central node” of communications between the memecoin’s promoters and those in Argentina, according to La Nación.

He exchanged messages with both Milei and Milei’s sister, who also exercises the role of chief of staff.

Notably, the analysis also shows that Novelli helped to coordinate Milei’s media response in the aftermath of the scandal, according to La Nación.

He and Milei discussed what the president would say — and omit — in a widely televised interview with pro-Milei journalist Jony Viale, according to La Nación.

They “exchanged ideas and suggestions about what to respond and what to keep quiet,” sources told La Nación.

In that interview, Milei claimed he had simply copied the Libra contract code from the internet and posted it to X. But experts who testified under oath before Congress confirmed the contract code was not publicly available online at 7:01 PM when Milei posted it.

Milei’s office didn’t immediately return a request for comment to DL News.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

One Bitcoin advocate thinks he knows why: Coinbase.

Yesterday, Ten31 managing partner and Bitcoin advocate Marty Bent fired the first shot, alleging that lobbyists from the US’s largest exchange were telling lawmakers that “no one is using Bitcoin as money” and pushing for tax exemptions that apply solely to stablecoins like USDC.

Bent claims to have spoken to three sources close to the matter.

USDC’s issuer, Circle, has had a strategic relationship with Coinbase since 2018, with the exchange earning revenue from USDC reserves.

Multiple Coinbase executives quickly denied Bent’s allegations, calling them “categorically false.” They said the company has advocated for tax exemptions covering “all digital assets,” including Bitcoin, since 2017.

“This is a total lie, Marty Bent,” wrote Faryar Shirzad, Coinbase’s chief policy officer. “We have never and will never lobby against Bitcoin. Ever.”

Then Block CEO Jack Dorsey got involved, publicly questioning Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.

“Hope this is true for de minimis as well. Brian Armstrong?” asked Dorsey.

In just one word, Armstrong joined his colleagues in denying the allegations.

De minimis exemption

At the core of the clash is something called a “de minimis exemption.”

It’s basically a tax break for small crypto purchases. Without a de minimis exemption, it would be impractical to use crypto for payments.

Right now, the US treats crypto as property, meaning that every sale triggers capital gains taxes. Buying a coffee with Bitcoin? You have to report to the Internal Revenue Service because that’s a taxable event.

But whatever Coinbase’s role, there has been a change on Capitol Hill, according to Conner Brown, of the Bitcoin Policy Institute.

“Over the past three months, there’s been a strong shift on the Hill to limiting the de minimis exemption to stablecoins only,” Brown wrote, although he did not name Coinbase directly.

A recent bipartisan discussion draft of the Parity Act from Representatives Max Miller and Steven Horsford limits the exemption to “regulated payment stablecoins” — explicitly excluding Bitcoin, according to the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a Bitcoin-focused advocacy group that operates in Washington, DC.

That’s a wide departure from pro-Bitcoin Senator Cynthia Lummis’s original proposal for taxing crypto, which provided a de minimis exemption for Bitcoin.

The shift began in 2025, following passage of the GENIUS Act, according to the Bitcoin Policy Institute. The group has met with 19 congressional offices over the past three months pushing back.

Multiple proposals

The clash between Coinbase and Bitcoin advocates is further complicated by the fact that right now there are multiple tax relief proposals floating around Capitol Hill simultaneously.

First there’s the aforementioned personal use de minimis exemption. Then there’s a separate gas fee exemption for transaction costs. And then there’s stablecoin-specific relief that would ignore gains or losses within one penny.

Different crypto constituencies want different things. Bitcoiners prioritise personal use relief while stablecoin users want gas fee exemptions. Brokers want to eliminate burdensome requirements for stablecoin transactions.

That could explain the claims that Bitcoiners have made about Coinbase.

“Likely, different market participants will advocate more strongly for different provisions,” Jason Schwartz, a prominent crypto tax attorney wrote on X. “That doesn’t necessarily mean they are ‘lobbying to kill’ others.”

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

The National Tax Service, or NTS, has asked tech firms to bid for a contract to create a new crypto wallet and transaction monitoring system, South Korean media outlet Hans Kyungjae reported.

Crypto trading is currently untaxed in South Korea. But that’s about to change. While the issue of crypto taxation has become a political hot potato in recent years, a law requiring residents to pay 20% income tax and 2% on their gains over $1,700 will come into force on January 1, 2027.

Individuals who fail to declare their crypto profits correctly could face additional taxes and heavy surcharges at the hands of the NTS, the outlet wrote.

$2m budget

The NTS says it has earmarked about $2 million for the project, in the hope that the developer will use artificial intelligence to comb through transaction data from the country’s five permit-holding crypto exchanges and quickly spot common tax evasion-linked transaction patterns.

Officials will also be able to use the platform to monitor residents’ peer-to-peer transactions and income from crypto derivative investments in real time.

A contractor will be selected on April 14, the service said, and will then be given eight months to complete the platform.

The service wants beta testing to begin in November, with an official launch pencilled in for December.

Political point-scoring

South Korean lawmakers first voted to introduce crypto taxation back in 2020. But they’ve voted to delay crypto tax three times, amid pushback from the crypto community.

Politicians on both sides of the National Assembly have also promised to delay crypto tax ahead of legislative and presidential elections, in the hope of winning votes from younger voters.

Lawmakers are currently mulling proposals to include crypto airdrops and staking rewards in tax calculations.

The new platform, with its capacity to analyse blockchain data, will help the NTS do precisely that, unnamed experts told South Korean newspaper Seoul Kyungjae.

Tax officials already use data from South Korean exchanges to seize coins from people who fail to pay their local taxes and traffic fines.

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

After a bruising presidential election, the Democratic Party has everything to play for in the upcoming midterm elections this November.

And crypto ventures linked to US President Donald Trump’s family increasingly feature in their attack lines.

In February alone, leading democrats like anti-crypto firebrand Elizabeth Warren called for a probe into one of the Trump family’s top crypto ventures and launched an investigation into Binance, which custodies nearly 90% of a Trump-linked stablecoin.

More will come, say Democratic Party strategists.

“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.

“These critiques often surface during periods of heightened legislative debate, such as the current discussions surrounding the Clarity Act and executive branch ethics.”

The attacks add to a growing barrage that includes the drip-fed release of the Epstein Files, Trump’s chaotic approach to foreign policy, his heavy-handed immigration strategy, and the escalating war in the Middle East — all of which have forced his approval ratings into a nosedive.

Just 40% of Americans say Trump has the right idea, according to a March poll from YouGov.

The question is, will these attacks be successful?

Crypto backing

Trump didn’t start out as a crypto evangelist.

He dismissed Bitcoin as “a scam against the dollar” in 2021.

But in May 2024, Trump took to the stage at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida retreat, and announced himself as a pro-crypto candidate.

“If you’re in favour of crypto you’d better vote for Trump,” he said.

The crypto industry then poured $10.5 million into his campaign and just under $71 million to support Republican candidates ahead of the 2024 election, according to data compiled by White.

In total, the industry spent $197 million in that cycle.

Once he returned to the Oval Office, Trump signed sweeping executive orders to create a national crypto stockpile, banned the creation of a central bank digital currency, pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, appointed industry-friendly people to key government positions, and signed a landmark stablecoin bill into law.

Venture capitalists have since returned to fund crypto ventures, Wall Street has openly strengthened its digital asset chops, and the value of the overall cryptocurrency market reached a record high of $4.2 trillion in October, only to lose about half of its value.

Trump-linked crypto ventures

Trump’s family has also launched crypto ventures of its own.

The day before his inauguration, Trump launched official memecoins for himself and First Lady Melania Trump. Both those tokens now trade 96% and 99%, respectively, below their all-time highs.

This has drawn criticism from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, and from House Democrats like Warren.

Crypto researcher Molly White told DL News that “in races where Democrats are challenging explicitly MAGA Republicans, I expect they will challenge those opponents to defend or disavow Trump’s corruption.”

But the big project linked to Trump is World Liberty Financial.

First announced in 2024, the Ethereum-based decentralised finance protocol wants to replace traditional finance and banks with blockchain rails.

In January, it applied for a banking licence to make USD1 the go-to stablecoin, and last month, Mar-a-Lago hosted a conference attended by crypto bigwigs.

Democrats attack

Democrats have wasted no time in attacking Trump for the different crypto ventures linked to him.

“Congress has failed to rein in Trump’s self-enrichment,” said White. ”The degree to which he is profiting from the office seems to make headlines practically every other week.”

After top investors in Trump’s memecoin were invited to a gala dinner in 2025, US Senator Jon Ossoff called the launch of the venture an “impeachable offense.”

Speaking to DL News, the late Representative Gerry Connolly alleged Trump has 100 conflicts of interest and that his direct dealings with the crypto industry were “open corruption.”

And lawmakers like representatives Maxine Waters and Stephen Lynch have even attacked bills signed by the president to regulate stablecoins or ban CBDCs as bad ideas.

“Donald Trump has turned the Oval Office into the world’s most corrupt crypto startup operation, minting staggering personal fortunes for him and his family in less than a year,” Democratic Representative for Maryland Jamie Raskin alleged in a report last year.

Most recently, though, it is World Liberty Financial that has attracted Democrats‘ ire.

Senator Warren has described the DeFi protocol as “corruption, plain and simple.”

Democrats have launched a formal investigation after a Wall Street Journal article reported that a UAE firm bought a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial for $500 million, days before Trump’s inauguration.

World Liberty Financial did not respond to questions from DL News.

Will attacks succeed?

Despite the attacks, some have hinted that going after World Liberty Financial is not the best idea.

“It really wouldn’t play into [the Democrats’] hands,” Ishmael Green, a partner at law firm Bochner PLLC, told DL News.

“When you understand monetary policy, [investment in World Liberty Financial] is a win-win for everyone, because we want the UAE to buy our treasuries anyway,” he continued, referring to the UAE’s investment in the crypto project’s USD1 stablecoin.

The White House, when contacted by DL News, denied allegations from Democrats that the president and his family had engaged in conflicts of interest.

“The fact is that no President in modern history has worked harder or accomplished more for the American people than President Trump did during his first historic year in office,” Karoline Leavitt, press secretary for the White House, said.

“President Trump proudly made the United States the crypto capital of the world through executive actions, supporting legislation like the Genius A, and other commonsense policies to drive innovation and economic opportunity for all Americans.”

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email them at mdisalvo@dlnews.com and eric@dlnews.com.