DeFi News Hub

A trio of accounts on Polymarket made more than $600,000 on U.S./Iran ceasefire markets, drawing attention as potential insiders.

Payments giant Visa is opening its Intelligent Commerce platform to businesses worldwide, expanding the infrastructure that allows artificial intelligence (AI) agents to shop, compare, and complete purchases on behalf of consumers and enterprises.

The move comes one week after Visa published its Business-to-AI (B2AI) Report, which found that 53% of U.S. business leaders surveyed would allow AI agents to negotiate prices or terms directly with other AI agents on their behalf. The report also found that 71% of businesses said they are willing to optimize products, offers, and experiences specifically for AI agents, while 77% are already using or piloting AI in their operations.

On the consumer side, nearly 40% of Americans reported making a purchase they normally would not have considered as a result of using an AI agent or tool, an early signal that autonomous systems are actively shaping demand rather than merely filtering it.

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Blockchain infrastructure company Biconomy has unveiled ERC-8211, an execution standard for on-chain AI agents, co-developed with the Ethereum Foundation, per an X post on April 7. The development falls under the EF’s Improve UX initiative.

The new standard — referred to as "smart batching" — lets AI agents carry out complex, multi-step DeFi strategies without pre-encoding every parameter at signing time. The specification was published on April 6 alongside an open-source reference implementation and a live demo.

The proposal lists four authors, primarily current and former Biconomy engineers: Mislav Javor, Filip Dujmušić, Filipp Makarov, and Venkatesh Rajendran.

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AB network’s planned “blockchain theme resort” involved individuals sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury over ties to the Prince Group.

John Carreyrou isn’t the first person to link Adam Back and Satoshi Nakamoto based on their writing styles.

The Solana meme coin based on the viral pygmy hippo Moo Deng gained after a man was fined for entering the animal's enclosure.

Enforcement actions and penalties both fell sharply as the agency moves toward fraud-only crypto oversight.

Iranian officials said Bitcoin payments would ensure the tolls “can’t be traced or confiscated due to sanctions.”

Investors gained access to an ETF that’s designed to avoid the U.S. trading session, offering exposure to Bitcoin while Wall Street sleeps.

Arkham Intelligence announced it will remove support for the TON blockchain from its Arkham Intel platform on Wednesday, April 8 at 12pm EST. The decision follows a periodic review of chain integrations, with Arkham citing user demand and the blockchain's importance to the crypto ecosystem as key evaluation factors.

Arkham regularly evaluates its chain integrations to determine which blockchains warrant continued maintenance and support on the platform. The removal of TON comes as Arkham maintains its intelligence and on-chain analytics services across other major blockchain networks.

Sources: Arkham

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Securitize announced a partnership with Currenc Group (Nasdaq: CURR) to tokenize the company's ordinary shares on Ethereum and Solana. The move comes as Securitize was recently named the first digital transfer agent in the NYSE's onchain securities initiative. Tokenized shares will enable 24/7 trading, lower costs, fractional ownership, and DeFi integration.

The partnership represents a continuation of efforts to bring traditional equities onto blockchain infrastructure. Securitize's designation as a digital transfer agent by the NYSE signals institutional momentum behind onchain securities infrastructure. The tokenization of Currenc Group's shares demonstrates practical implementation of blockchain-based equity trading for publicly listed companies.

Sources: Securitize (Twitter/X)

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The White House Council of Economic Advisers released a study Wednesday examining stablecoin yield and its impact on deposit flight and bank lending. The report finds that eliminating stablecoin yield would increase bank lending by just 0.02%—approximately $2.1 billion—while resulting in a net welfare loss to consumers. The findings directly contradict concerns from some Senate Banking lawmakers who had pressed the White House to release the report.

The report concludes that deposit flight concerns related to stablecoin yield are "quantitatively small," noting that most stablecoin reserves remain within the banking system with only a limited share removed from lending activity. The executive summary states: "a yield prohibition would do very little to protect bank lending, while forgoing the consumer benefits of competitive returns on stablecoin holdings."

Sources: White House

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A White House report found that banning stablecoin yield products would boost community bank lending by just 0.02%.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation proposed new rules on Tuesday to oversee stablecoins issued through the banking system under the GENIUS Act. The FDIC board of directors voted to advance the proposal, which sets parameters for how stablecoins may be issued and managed by regulated depository institutions.

The proposal represents the FDIC's formal regulatory framework for stablecoin operations within the traditional banking sector. Details on specific requirements and implementation timelines were included in the Tuesday statement.

Sources: FDIC

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Markets are ripping on a surprise Trump-announced ceasefire, while Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin ETF goes live today.

Crypto prices jumped on the announcement of a two-week ceasefire and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz—but macro events loom.

A decentralized exchange on Solana urged its users to exit after a former executive was alleged to be a North Korean hacker.

Crypto markets retreated on Tuesday as President Donald Trump's self-imposed deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz drew closer, dampening risk appetite across global markets.

Bitcoin is trading at $69,200, according to CoinGecko, recovering from an intraday dip below $68,000 but still well off Monday's brief push above $70,000. Ethereum is changing hands at $2,112, while Solana trades at $82. XRP fell 1.6% to $1.32.

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Prosecutors said a recent Supreme Court ruling should have no bearing on Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm’s looming retrial.

Decentralized lending giant Aave's native token fell near a 2-year-low price following news that another ecosystem contributor is leaving.

The FDIC’s proposal establishes federal oversight standards for stablecoin issuers while explicitly excluding tokens from deposit insurance protections.

Overcollateralized lending has emerged as one of DeFi's most durable primitives.

Morpho alone holds roughly $7 billion in TVL, according to DeFiLlama, with distribution via Coinbase, Kraken, and other front ends. Apollo Global Management has committed to acquiring up to 9% of MORPHO's token supply over four years, and the Ethereum Foundation has deployed nearly $19 million into the protocol's vaults.

But a quantitative analysis published Sunday by Dirt Roads, a DeFi research publication authored by Luca Prosperi, has sparked a debate over whether the depositors fueling that growth are being systematically undercompensated, or whether the lending primitive is working exactly as it should.

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Trump threatened to erase an entire civilization by tonight, and markets—including Bitcoin—are predictably on edge.

Sky Governance is proposing two structural upgrades to strengthen the protocol's capital protection framework, according to an announcement on April 7, 2026. The proposals include implementing a stronger solvency buffer and adopting a more sustainable staking rewards model. The measures are designed to solidify Sky Protocol's long-term stability while prioritizing trustworthiness over short-term yield-seeking.

Sky Protocol cited sUSDS, its yield-generating stablecoin, as the largest in its category, attributing its success to the protocol's distinctive risk posture compared to competitors in the space. The governance updates reflect Sky Protocol's commitment to capital protection and long-term sustainability.

Sources: Sky Ecosystem

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Morgan Stanley is joining the Bitcoin ETF party late, but Bloomberg's Eric Balchunas says the investment bank isn't showing up empty-handed.

The Fifth Element and Resident Evil star reveals an AI project inspired by the ancient “memory palace” method.

AAVE fell as low as $85 on Tuesday before partially recovering to trade near $88, extending a selloff that has now erased roughly 75% of the token's value since its August 2025 high near $356.

The latest drop came as DeFi selling accelerated across the board, but AAVE has been underperforming the broader market for months amid an escalating governance crisis that has cost the protocol three prominent independent contributors.

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Morgan Stanley's much-anticipated spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund is expected to begin trading on Wednesday, April 8, on NYSE Arca. Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas confirmed the launch date in an X post today, citing the NYSE’s listing notice.

Bloomberg's Isabelle Lee had signaled during a Monday broadcast that the launch was imminent, stating it would be “probably this week.“

The fund will enter the market as the lowest-cost spot Bitcoin ETF in the U.S. Per Morgan Stanley's most recent S-1 amendment filed with the SEC, the annual expense ratio is just 0.14%, undercutting Grayscale's Bitcoin Mini Trust, which is currently the lowest-fee option at 0.15%, and sitting well below BlackRock's IBIT, which charges 0.25%.

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The Solana Foundation will offer tiered security services to DeFi protocols, marking a shift toward institutionalized protection following the Drift exploit.

Binance on Tuesday announced a Spot Price Range Execution Rule (PRER) that will restrict order execution to dynamic price bands and automatically expire all taker orders with execution prices outside a specified range. The rule takes effect on April 14 with a gradual rollout across spot trading pairs.

The mechanism allows orders to execute only within dynamic price bands set around a reference price derived from recent trades, the exchange said. Unlike stop-loss or limit orders set by individual users, PRER is an exchange-level market protection mechanism applied during order matching — functionally analogous to circuit breakers on traditional stock exchanges.

The rule comes six months after the 10/10 crash, when crypto markets suffered their largest single-day liquidation event on record. The event wiped out over $19 billion in leveraged positions within 24 hours, impacting more than 1.6 million traders, triggered by President Trump's threat of a 100% tariff on Chinese tech imports.

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Jupiter, the largest decentralized exchange aggregator by trading volume, today announced a new developer tool, the Express Verification API by Jupiter VRFD.

The verification API allows launchpads, DEXs, and AI agents to integrate verification into their token creation flows, so that tokens can be verified programmatically.

The three-step API flow involves a developer creating and signing a Solana transaction burning 1,000 JUP, then submitting the verification request alongside any token metadata updates in a single call. As Jupiter’s documentation explains, verification and metadata updates are reviewed independently, meaning a metadata change can go through even if a verification request is declined. Submissions can also be repeated as needed.

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New evidence from Argentina's federal probe into LIBRA complicates Milei's claim he had no ties to the meme coin.

Bitcoin usually drives investment action around crypto ETFs, but last week, XRP led as overall crypto fund flows flipped positive.

CME Group is adding to its list of crypto derivatives contracts, expanding to include Avalanche and Sui in early May.

Institutional collateral and liquidity optimization fintech Transcend announced today, April 7, that it has connected to privacy-focused blockchain Canton Network. The integration enables clients to move collateral and cash in real time across counterparties and markets using a mix of traditional and tokenized assets.

Per the release, Transcend connects to more than 45 central counterparty clearinghouses (CCPs) — the intermediaries that sit between buyers and sellers in derivatives and securities markets to reduce counterparty risk — as well as five triparty agents. The integration with Canton appears to be the fintech’s first partnership with a crypto firm, letting institutions incorporate tokenized assets into existing workflows without restructuring their operating models.

The company is also building a node-as-a-service on Canton and two-way APIs to translate between DeFi and TradFi systems, nothing it will start with Canton and extend to other blockchain platforms.

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The proposed Ethereum ERC-8211 standard would allow complex, multi-step blockchain actions to run in one transaction.

CME Group announced its plans to launch Avalanche and Sui futures contracts in a press release on Tuesday, April 7. Pending regulatory review, the contracts will be available in both larger and micro sizes, designed to provide capital efficiency and strategic flexibility for traders.

The addition expands CME Group's existing crypto product suite — which consists of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP futures, per its website — and follows the exchange's broader push into digital asset derivatives. Micro contracts typically require lower margin requirements, enabling greater accessibility for retail and institutional participants.

Source: CME Group

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A Reddit post claiming 75% output token savings sparked 400 comments and multiple GitHub repos dedicated to making AI grunt its way to efficiency.

Older Americans bore nearly 40% of all crypto fraud losses in 2025, as investment scams and crypto ATM fraud ran rampant.

Security researcher Taylor Monahan disclosed Sunday that North Korean agents have been embedded inside more than 40 decentralized finance platforms for nearly a decade. The claim connects the $280 million Drift Protocol exploit last week to a broader network of North Korean IT workers operating inside some of crypto's largest projects. Monahan attributed the coordinated operations to what security researchers have linked to the Lazarus Group, a state-sponsored hacking organization.

The revelation indicates a sustained infiltration campaign targeting DeFi infrastructure rather than isolated attacks. According to NCC Group research cited in reporting on the matter, similar attack patterns have been attributed to North Korean threat actors operating against the crypto sector for more than a decade. The discovery raises questions about operational security practices across major DeFi protocols and the extent of undetected compromises within the ecosystem.

Sources: Taylor Monahan (@tayvano_) on X | Bitcoinist | NCC Group Research

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US-listed spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded $471.32 million in net inflows on April 6, marking their largest single-day inflow in six weeks since February 25. Twelve of the twelve ETFs tracked posted either zero or positive flows, with BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) leading inflows. The surge brought cumulative net inflows across all spot bitcoin ETFs to $56.43 billion.

The inflow spike reflects renewed institutional confidence in crypto markets after a period of weakness. No spot bitcoin ETF registered negative flows during the day, a rare occurrence that underscores broad-based buying pressure across the sector.

Sources: The Block | SoSoValue

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Bitcoin rose and fell alongside ceasefire hopes. Strategy and Tom Lee kept buying size. And Polymarket may be building its own financial system.

A Bitcoin whale transferred 300 BTC worth over $20 million to Binance Tuesday, potentially facing a $15 million loss.

The Polygon Foundation confirmed the Giugliano hardfork will activate on mainnet at block 85,268,500 on April 8 at approximately 2 p.m. UTC. The upgrade targets faster finality and improved fee transparency, allowing block producers to announce blocks earlier and reducing transaction confirmation time to finality.

The hardfork is part of Polygon's broader push toward higher throughput for payments and tokenized assets. The upgrade follows a challenging 2025 for the network.

Sources: Polygon Foundation Forum | Polygonscan | BeInCrypto

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Stablecoin supply on Ethereum has reached an all-time high of $180 billion, up 150% over the past three years, according to Token Terminal. Ethereum currently holds a 60% market share in the stablecoin sector, dominating the landscape for dollar-pegged tokens across blockchain networks.

Token Terminal projects $1.7 trillion in stablecoin inflows to blockchain networks over the next four years. Assuming Ethereum's market share gradually declines from 60% to 50%, the network could capture approximately $850 billion in new stablecoin flows by 2030.

Sources: Token Terminal

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Bitcoin ETFs saw their biggest inflow in six weeks as crypto investors positioned ahead of Trump's Iran deadline.

The Solana Foundation announced the launch of STRIDE (Solana Trust, Resilience and Infrastructure for DeFi Enterprises) and the Solana Incident Response Network (SIRN) on Monday. STRIDE establishes security requirements and independent evaluations for Solana protocols, with the Solana Foundation funding formal verification for protocols above $100M TVL and providing 24/7 threat monitoring for those above $10M TVL. SIRN, a membership-based network led by founding members Asymmetric Research, OpenZeppelin Security, Neodyme, Multisig, and Zero Shadow, offers real-time incident response across the ecosystem with prioritization by TVL.

The initiatives represent an ecosystem-wide investment in security standards as Solana scales. STRIDE includes hands-on evaluations and a public repository of findings available to all protocols. All three programs—STRIDE, threat monitoring, and formal verification—are funded by the Solana Foundation, with SIRN available to all protocols on the network.

Sources: Solana Foundation

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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said that the rate of AI adoption "will likely be far faster than prior technological transformations."

JPMorgan released a projection on Monday stating that the tokenized real-world assets (RWA) market could grow to $13 trillion by 2030. The estimate reflects the investment bank's outlook on the expansion of blockchain-based tokenization of traditional assets including securities, commodities, and real estate.

The projection underscores growing institutional interest in RWA tokenization as a mechanism to improve settlement efficiency and accessibility to traditionally illiquid assets. JPMorgan has been active in the blockchain space, previously launching its own blockchain network for institutional payments.

Sources: WatcherGuru

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Polymarket is overhauling its technical foundations and launching a stablecoin as it aims to improve the user experience and order book.

A new OpenAI blueprint urges economic changes for the AI era as reporting raises questions about Altman’s motivations.

Holders of tokenized shares in Galaxy (GLXY) will soon be able to participate in proxy voting on-chain via Broadridge.

BlackRock's BUIDL token on Ethereum has surpassed $1 billion in market capitalization, achieving roughly 115% gains year-to-date as of April 6, 2026. The milestone marks significant growth for the tokenized fund product since the start of 2026.

BUIDL represents BlackRock's foray into on-chain tokenized assets, offering exposure to short-duration U.S. Treasury bills and cash equivalents on the Ethereum blockchain. The token's market cap growth reflects broader institutional adoption of blockchain-based financial products.

Sources: Token Terminal

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Crypto markets rallied on Monday as mediators submitted a 45-day ceasefire plan to the U.S. and Iran, while Michael Saylor's Strategy resumed buying BTC after a weeklong pause.

Bitcoin is trading at around $69,700, up 3.7% over the past 24 hours. ETH surged 4% to $2,150, while SOL climbed 2.5% to $82. Meanwhile, XRP added 3%.

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Altcoins like Ethereum and Solana have plunged from all-time highs, but their recent resilience is a compelling sign, according to Grayscale.

Every perpetual contract tracking real-world assets (RWA) on Aster will settle exclusively in USD1, World Liberty Financial's dollar-pegged stablecoin, according to posts from both projects on X.

The first markets rolling out include gold, silver, crude oil, and Brent crude, with additional markets to follow, Aster said. The fee structure for USD1 commodity pairs is set at 1 basis point for takers and a negative 0.5 basis points for makers — meaning the exchange will pay a rebate to liquidity providers.

The two sides also said they are "exploring integration across their respective tokens," though neither project elaborated.

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84.1% of all Polymarket traders are in the red, according to new research published today, April 6, by independent on-chain analyst Andrey Sergeenkov.

The report looked at 2.5 million wallet addresses, analyzing data from on-chain transactions on Polygon, via Dune Analytics. Sergeenkov found that over the past year, only 2% of traders have ever made more than $1,000 in their entire history on the platform, and just 0.033% — or 840 addresses — have earned $100,000 trading on Polymarket.

Sergeenkov also took on the claim that traders can earn a living on Polymarket, analyzing the odds of consistently earning $5,000 per month — just below the average monthly salary in the U.S. — and found that those odds are less than 1% in any single month.

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A solo miner with computing power equivalent to just 0.00002% of Bitcoin's network successfully mined a block last week.

Polymarket on Monday unveiled Polymarket USD, a proprietary collateral token backed 1:1 by USDC that will replace bridged USDC.e as the settlement asset across the on-chain prediction market.

The new token is the centerpiece of what Polymarket called its most significant infrastructure change to date — a full exchange upgrade spanning new smart contracts, a rebuilt central limit order book, and updated developer SDKs, all rolling out over the next two to three weeks.

For most users, the frontend will handle wrapping automatically with a one-time approval prompt, Polymarket said. Power users and API traders will need to wrap their USDC or USDC.e into the new token via a Collateral Onramp contract.

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Chaos Labs, the risk management firm that has “priced every loan on Aave since November 2022,” announced Monday that it is proactively terminating its engagement with DeFi’s largest lending protocol, citing a fundamental disagreement over how risk should be managed.

The departure makes Chaos the third core contributor to exit Aave's operations in recent months, following BGD Labs' exit on April 1 and the Aave-Chan Initiative's wind-down announcement in early March.

In a forum post, Chaos Labs CEO Omer Goldberg named all three alongside TokenLogic as the contributor group whose "people, technology, and operational experience" produced Aave's track record, and noted that Chaos is now the last remaining technical contributor from that cohort.

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Bloomberg’s Mike McGlone argued that Bitcoin could fall as the crypto market purges market excesses that coincided with the pandemic-era boom.

Ethena Labs is finalizing its first direct lending agreements with Anchorage Digital, Maple Institutional, and Coinbase Asset Management as part of a sweeping plan to diversify the assets backing its USDe synthetic dollar.

Under the agreements, Ethena would lend stablecoins from USDe's reserves to facilitate overcollateralized loans originated by those entities, with borrower collateral held in secured triparty custody. Each loan will operate within parameters set by the Ethena Risk Committee, including minimum overcollateralization ratios, concentration limits, automatic liquidation thresholds, and tenors designed to minimize liquidity risk during large USDe redemption events.

Ethena framed the move as a natural extension of the stablecoin lending it already does on DeFi protocols like Aave and Morpho, but for institutional counterparties with only high-quality, immediately liquid collateral such as BTC and ETH.

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Circle’s upcoming Arc blockchain is gearing up for quantum resilience, revealing a multi-step roadmap to prepare for the looming threat.

Tom Lee’s Bitcoin (BTC) mining company turned Ethereum (ETH) digital assset treasury (DAT), BitMine Immersion Technologies, has been approved to uplist from NYSE American to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The company announced the news in a press release today, April 6, alongside its latest ETH purchase and staking data.

The largest Ethereum treasury firm's move to NYSE is an indicator of growth and maturity for the firm, as the main NYSE board has stricter requirements, including for number of shareholders and float. Generally, the move marks an ascent from small-cap to large-cap status. Trading under the same ticker, BMNR, will move to the NYSE at the open on Thursday, April 9, the release notes.

BMNR shares on NYSE American are up over 6% today on the news, per data from Yahoo Finance, trading near $21.

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In a new staff research note published on Thursday, The International Monetary Fund (IMF) argues that tokenization represents a "structural shift in financial architecture," not just an incremental efficiency gain.

Authored by Tobias Adrian — the IMF's Financial Counsellor and Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department — the report focuses on the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) within the regulated financial system, namely banks, finance infrastructure, and asset managers, arguing that’s where “the most consequential transformation occurs.”

Settlement Speed Is a Double-Edged Sword

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Coinbase announced on Thursday that it has received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish Coinbase National Trust Company, a non-insured national trust bank to be headquartered in New York.

The approval marks a step toward Coinbase operating as a federally regulated digital asset custodian — and the latest milestone in a sweeping regulatory shift reshaping how crypto firms interact with the U.S. banking system.

The preliminary green light requires Coinbase to build out compliance systems, hire key staff, pass regulatory reviews, and demonstrate strong risk management and anti-money-laundering controls before it can secure a full charter.

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Riot Platforms, a major publicly traded Bitcoin mining company listed on Nasdaq, sold 3,778 BTC during Q1 2026, netting approximately $289.5 million in proceeds. The sale represents a significant reduction in the miner's Bitcoin holdings and marks a notable shift in the company's position management strategy.

The move aligns with broader selling activity across the Bitcoin mining sector. Multiple publicly traded miners have collectively sold more than 15,000 BTC in recent months, signaling increased liquidation pressure within the industry.

Sources: Riot Platforms

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Crypto markets slumped on Thursday as a fresh wave of risk-off sentiment swept across global markets following President Donald Trump's pledge to continue military strikes against Iran.

Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at around $66,900, down 1.7% over the past 24 hours. ETH slipped 4% to $2,050, and SOL plunged 6% to $79 in the wake of the Drift exploit. Meanwhile, Ripple (XRP) dropped 3.3%.

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Wallet in Telegram has launched perpetual futures trading through a new integration with Lighter, the Ethereum-based decentralized exchange (DEX), the teams announced Thursday.

The feature enables users to open long and short positions on more than 50 assets — spanning crypto, metals, equities, oil, and ETFs — with up to 50x leverage and a minimum position size of $1, all without leaving the Telegram app.

The Open Platform (TOP), the entity that develops Wallet in Telegram, told Forbes that it evaluated multiple decentralized perpetual exchanges before selecting Lighter, with the decision driven by cost structure, incentive design, and alignment with a retail-heavy audience. Lighter's zero-fee model for standard accounts was a key factor.

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The x402 protocol, Coinbase's open standard for embedding stablecoin payments directly into web interactions, has officially moved to the Linux Foundation as the newly launched x402 Foundation opens its doors with a broad coalition of industry heavyweights.

The announcement, made Thursday at the MCP Dev Summit North America, marks the protocol's transition from a Coinbase-led project to a vendor-neutral, community-governed standard designed to accelerate adoption as AI agents increasingly need to pay for services autonomously.

The foundation's initial governing body includes Cloudflare and Stripe, and founding members include Adyen, Amazon Web Services, American Express, Ampersend.ai, Ant International, Base, Circle, Fiserv Merchant Solutions, Google, KakaoPay, Mastercard, Merit Systems, Microsoft, Polygon Labs, PPRO, Sierra, Shopify, Solana Foundation, Thirdweb and Visa.

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Polymarket has expanded beyond crypto and event-based contracts into traditional financial assets, integrating oracle provider Pyth Network as the resolution source for a new suite of equity, index, and commodity markets.

The collaboration, announced on Wednesday, launches with daily up/down and daily close markets for major equity indices, commodities including gold, silver, WTI crude, and natural gas, and more than a dozen U.S. equities such as TSLA, COIN, PLTR, NVDA, and AAPL.

Alongside the integration, Pyth unveiled Pyth Terminal, a live data interface that allows traders to explore and verify price feeds in real time. The tool includes benchmark comparisons for U.S. equities and foreign exchange, publisher-level transparency for each feed, and free API key access for new sign-ups.

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Kraken launched an opt-in rewards program for xStocks on Thursday, offering users up to 1% rewards by holding tokenized U.S. equities and ETFs. The rewards program addresses a gap in traditional equities markets, which typically lack accessible yield mechanisms beyond dividends. xStocks, Kraken's 24/7 permissionless onchain equities products, enable crypto-native investors to access U.S. stocks and ETFs outside traditional market hours.

The opt-in structure allows users to choose participation in the rewards program without mandatory enrollment. xStocks were designed to bring familiar equity products into decentralized ecosystems where many investors already transact, extending traditional market access into crypto environments that operate around the clock.

Sources: Kraken Blog | Kraken Support | Kraken xStocks

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Ethereum's dominance in non-USD stablecoin supply has shrunk to 65% as of February 2026, down from 90% in early 2023, according to data published by Dune and Visa on Thursday. Despite the decline, Ethereum remains the default chain for stablecoin issuance, though other blockchains are catching up in market share.

While Ethereum leads in issuance, it ranks only fifth by unique senders across stablecoin networks. The absolute growth in activity has been significant, with unique senders increasing from 2,000 to 12,000 year-over-year as of February 2026, indicating expanded user adoption across the stablecoin ecosystem.

Sources: Dune

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SoFi launched Big Business Banking, an enterprise platform on Solana that combines traditional fiat banking with stablecoin services on a single regulated platform. The nationally chartered bank, which has 13.7 million members and over $50 billion in assets, is offering 24/7 payment support enabling companies to hold dollars, convert to stablecoins, and move money instantly. Initial participants include Cumberland, Bullish, BitGo, B2C2, Fireblocks, Wintermute, Galaxy, Jupiter, Mesh Payments, and Mastercard.

The platform represents a significant integration of traditional banking infrastructure with blockchain technology, leveraging Solana's network to enable real-time settlement for enterprise customers. The service allows participating firms to conduct both fiat and crypto operations within a regulated banking framework, eliminating the need for separate banking and crypto rails.

Sources: Solana (Official) | CoinDesk | The Block

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Venture capital firm Paradigm is developing a prediction markets trading terminal targeted at professional traders and market makers, according to Fortune. Paradigm partner Arjun Balaji is spearheading the project, which has been in development since late 2025. The move comes as Paradigm has emerged as one of the most active backers of prediction markets, participating in three successive funding rounds for leading platform Kalshi in 2025.

Paradigm's push into prediction markets infrastructure reflects growing institutional interest in the sector. The venture firm's involvement with Kalshi, combined with this new trading terminal development, signals deepening commitment to the prediction markets ecosystem as platforms like Kalshi and Coinbase's prediction markets offering expand.

Sources: Fortune

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Crypto markets started April in the green, snapping a bruising first quarter with a late-March relief rally that continued into Wednesday as hopes of geopolitical de-escalation lifted risk assets across the board.

Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at around $68,000 after reaching as high as $69,200 earlier in the day. ETH climbed 2% to $2,140, and SOL was flat at $84 in the wake of the Drift exploit. Meanwhile, Ripple (XRP) was unchanged at $1.35.

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Federal prosecutors in California have charged ten foreign nationals from four crypto market-making firms with orchestrating wash trading and pump-and-dump schemes to artificially inflate token prices at the expense of retail investors.

Three defendants were arrested in Singapore, extradited to the United States, and made their initial appearances in federal court in Oakland on March 30.

The firms named in the indictments are Gotbit, Vortex, Antier Solutions, and Contrarian.

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Solana-based perpetuals exchange Drift Protocol has suffered a series of large-scale outflows, with roughly $270 million in assets moving from the protocol's vault address in a matter of minutes.

The transfers spanned more than 15 distinct token types — including stablecoins, wrapped Bitcoin variants, liquid staking tokens, Jupiter’s JLP vault token, and even memecoins — all originating from an address Arkham labels as "Drift Protocol: Vault (JCNCM)," which corresponds to Drift's documentation.

The vault's holdings have fallen from $309 million to just $41 million.

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Franklin Templeton has agreed to acquire 250 Digital, an active crypto investment management firm spun out of venture firm CoinFund in January, establishing a dedicated division called Franklin Crypto aimed at institutional investors.

The deal, announced Wednesday, includes the full 250 Digital investment team and all liquid cryptocurrency strategies previously run by CoinFund. Franklin Templeton will also invest in those strategies as part of the agreement. The deal terms were not disclosed.

Notably, the transaction will include BENJI tokens — which represent shares in the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) — as payment consideration. The company described the move as "an important and innovative step toward conducting M&A transactions using tokenized assets."

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Unique senders of non-USD stablecoins on Solana nearly tripled year-over-year, according to data from Dune released April 1, 2026. The growth is being driven by adoption of EURC and BRZ stablecoins. Solana is positioning stablecoin payments as a core use case, leveraging its sub-second finality and near-zero fees, with institutional integrations from Visa, Stripe, PayPal, Mastercard, and Western Union.

The adoption surge follows Solana's February 2026 launch of a stablecoin payment infrastructure. Dune published the findings alongside research conducted with Visa, detailing the expansion of regional stablecoins on the network. The growth reflects broader momentum toward cross-border payments on blockchain networks with high throughput and minimal transaction costs.

Sources: Dune

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Researchers at Caltech announced that a functional quantum computer may be feasible by 2030, requiring only 10,000 to 20,000 qubits rather than the millions previously estimated. The revised timeline comes as Google's Quantum AI team identified approximately 6.9 million BTC as potentially vulnerable to quantum attacks, though no such capable machine currently exists.

The Caltech findings suggest the crypto industry faces a compressed timeline to develop quantum-resistant security measures. Bitcoin and other cryptographic systems relying on current encryption standards could face theoretical attack vectors once quantum computers reach the projected capability threshold, prompting ongoing discussions about protocol upgrades and post-quantum cryptography adoption.

Sources: BSCNews

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Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao posted on X on April 1, 2026, addressing growing concerns about quantum computing's threat to cryptocurrency. CZ stated that the crypto industry can upgrade to quantum-resistant, or post-quantum, cryptographic algorithms to neutralize the risk, urging users not to panic over the potential threat.

CZ emphasized that upgrading to post-quantum algorithms is straightforward in theory, though he did not detail specific timelines or implementation plans. His comments come as debates persist in the crypto community about which protocols and assets—including Bitcoin's original coins—may be vulnerable to quantum computing advances.

Sources: CZ (Changpeng Zhao) on X | BeInCrypto

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New Hampshire issued a Bitcoin-backed municipal bond that received a Ba2 rating from Moody's on April 1, 2026, marking an unprecedented first in public finance. The bond represents the first time a U.S. municipality has secured a credit rating for a debt instrument backed by cryptocurrency assets.

The Ba2 rating places the bond in the upper-medium grade category, indicating moderate credit risk. This development signals growing acceptance of Bitcoin collateral in traditional municipal financing, though the long-term implications for public finance remain untested.

Sources: Cointelegraph

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Square has introduced a Bitcoin point-of-sale payments program for US merchants with zero processing fees through the end of 2026. The fee waiver removes transaction costs for small shops and local vendors accepting Bitcoin, addressing a key barrier to cryptocurrency adoption in everyday commerce. Merchants can receive US dollars instantly in their accounts while customers pay with Bitcoin.

The program aims to drive digital currency into mainstream retail by eliminating the financial friction of payment processing. The two-year fee waiver period extends through December 2026, giving merchants an extended window to test Bitcoin acceptance without losing revenue to transaction costs.

Sources: Square (X/Twitter) | Bitcoinist | MoneyCheck

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Coinbase's Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain Base published its 2026 mission, vision, and strategy on Tuesday, narrowing its focus to three pillars: building global markets for tokenized assets, scaling stablecoin payments, and positioning the chain as the default home for onchain builders, including AI agents.

The roadmap consolidates last year's five-pillar playbook around a thesis that the current phase of crypto is fundamentally about upgrading the financial system into a global, 24/7 onchain economy.

Base touted significant 2025 traction to justify the pivot: $17 trillion in stablecoin volume across 26 local currencies and 17 countries, the top onchain venue for BTC spot trading, the Base App live in 140+ countries, and 50+ teams funded through Base Batches. The chain overtook Ethereum and BNB Chain in weekly DEX volume earlier this year and currently holds $4 billion in TVL, making it the largest Layer 2 network.

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Resolv Labs co-founder Ivan Kozlov said in a video update on Monday that 98% of whitelisted USR holders have been redeemed at a 1:1 ratio, marking the first concrete recovery milestone since the protocol was exploited on March 22.

Kozlov said the team prioritized verified wallets because manual processing allowed them to act within 24 hours and limit further market impact. Non-whitelisted holders who held USR before the exploit will receive the same 1:1 commitment, he said, though the technical solution for those redemptions is still being finalized.

The protocol has retained Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant and blockchain incident response firm ZeroShadow to investigate the breach. Kozlov said no evidence of insider involvement has been found so far.

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Aztec Network has launched its Alpha Network, delivering what it says is the first Ethereum Layer 2 with a complete execution environment for private smart contracts.

The upgrade, which followed a unanimous community governance vote, builds on the Ignition Chain that went live in November 2025 as the coordination layer for decentralized sequencing and block production.

AZTEC is up 5% in the past 24 hours, trading at a roughly $200 million valuation, according to Coingecko.

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Plume, a blockchain focused on real-world assets (RWAs), has launched what it calls the first payroll pilot using a tokenized money market fund, enabling employees to convert part of their salaries into yield-bearing fund shares without interacting with crypto exchanges or moving funds onchain manually.

The pilot pairs Plume's onchain infrastructure with Toku's stablecoin payroll platform and WisdomTree's tokenized money market fund, WTGXX. Participating Plume employees can make a one-time election to route a portion of their pay into fund shares, which are purchased via WisdomTree Connect and held in verified wallets linked to WisdomTree Prime accounts.

WTGXX has emerged as one of the fastest-growing tokenized Treasury funds, surging more than 700% between May and August last year. WisdomTree has since expanded the fund's reach to Solana and integrated debit card spending functionality.

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A whitepaper published on March 30 by Google Quantum AI has dramatically compressed the estimated timeline for quantum computers to break the elliptic-curve cryptography that secures virtually every major blockchain — and the crypto industry is scrambling to assess the fallout.

The paper was co-authored by Google researchers Ryan Babbush and Hartmut Neven alongside Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake and Stanford cryptographer Dan Boneh. It concludes that breaking the 256-bit elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem underpinning Bitcoin and Ethereum transaction signatures would require fewer than 500,000 physical qubits, roughly a 20-fold reduction from previous estimates that placed the threshold in the millions.

"We want to raise awareness on this issue and are providing the cryptocurrency community with recommendations to improve security and stability before this is possible," the Google researchers wrote in an accompanying blog post.

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Bitcoin briefly traded above $67,000 on Monday as a relief rally rippled through crypto markets, buoyed by signals that the U.S.-Iran standoff may be approaching a diplomatic resolution.

Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at around $67,000, up less than 1% over the past 24 hours. ETH and SOL rose 2% to $2,050 and $84, respectively. Meanwhile, Ripple (XRP) was unchanged at $1.33.

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Steakhouse Financial warned users on Monday to stop interacting with its website and app after identifying a phishing attack targeting both domains.

"No deposits are at risk. No contracts are affected. All Steakhouse depositors are safe," the Zug, Switzerland-based firm said on X, adding that the threat primarily affects new users who may unknowingly interact with a compromised version of the website.

Blockchain security firm Blockaid flagged the attack as using code from Angelferno, which it described as one of the largest active wallet-drainer operations onchain. Drainers work by tricking users into signing malicious transactions that grant attackers full access to withdraw their funds.

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Valinor, a New York-based startup building what it calls "Open Credit" infrastructure at the intersection of institutional capital and decentralized finance (DeFi), has raised $25 million in a seed round to bring private credit onto the blockchain.

Castle Island Ventures led the round. Other investors include Susquehanna's crypto arm, Maven11, Apollo, Neoclassic Capital, The Venture Dept, 57Blocks, The Fintech Fund, and the founders of Bitcoin miner-turned-AI company TeraWulf, according to the company's website. The round's valuation was not disclosed.

Co-founders Connor Dougherty and Lily Yarborough both worked in Blackstone's GSO Special Situations credit division before launching Valinor in late 2023.

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Aave V4 is now live on Ethereum mainnet, marking a fundamental architectural overhaul of the largest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, which has over $24 billion in total value locked (TVL).

The upgrade introduces a hub-and-spoke design that allows markets to operate independently while sharing liquidity through a unified system — a shift the team says resolves a core limitation that has constrained DeFi lending since its inception.

"DeFi has built deep liquidity. Aave V4 shifts the focus to the demand side, putting that liquidity to work across real credit markets," said Aave founder and CEO Stani Kulechov.

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Metals.io, a new commodity tokenization platform built in the Tezos ecosystem, went live on Monday, giving users access to tokenized gold, uranium, and a basket of rare-earth metals through a single web application.

Developed by Trilitech, a London-based Tezos R&D hub, the platform launches with three assets: xU3O8 tokenized uranium, VNX Gold (VNXAU) — a gold-backed token representing allocated bullion held in Liechtenstein vaults — and the RARE token from Noemon Tech, which offers exposure to a diversified basket of five strategic metals, including hafnium, rhenium, indium, neodymium oxide, and praseodymium oxide.

The platform leverages Tezos' smart-rollup technology, which the team says delivers sub-50ms latency for near-instant transaction confirmations.

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Gnosis co-founder Friederike Ernst and Zisk founder Jordi Baylina announced the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ), a new Layer 1-to-Layer 2 framework designed to let rollups compose synchronously with Ethereum mainnet and with each other — eliminating the need for bridges and fragmented infrastructure.

The project, announced at EthCC in Cannes, is being co-funded by the Ethereum Foundation.

How It Works

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The World Foundation, which supports the Worldcoin (WLD) digital identity project, completed a $65 million over-the-counter token sale via its subsidiary World Assets Ltd. The block trades were executed with four private counterparties over the past week, with initial settlements beginning March 20, 2026, according to a March 28 statement. Tokens were priced at an average of $0.2719 per token.

The foundation stated the sale was conducted to fund Orbs manufacturing operations. The transactions represent a significant token liquidation by the organization backing Sam Altman's Worldcoin initiative, which provides digital identity services including iris scanning verification.

Sources: World Foundation

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A European Central Bank working paper challenges the notion that decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) deliver on their promise of distributed governance, finding that token holdings and voting power across four major DeFi protocols are heavily concentrated among a handful of actors.

The study examined governance structures at Aave, MakerDAO, Ampleforth, and Uniswap using data from late 2022 and mid-2023. The researchers analyzed the top 100 token holders and top 20 voters for each protocol, reviewed 248 governance proposals, and attempted to trace the real-world identities behind pseudonymous blockchain addresses.

The findings land at a moment when governance disputes are roiling some of the very protocols examined in the study, and DeFi projects more broadly are grappling with whether the Labs-plus-DAO structure is fit for purpose.

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Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, on Friday announced a new $600 million direct cash investment in Polymarket, completing the exchange operator's structured investment arrangement with the prediction market platform.

The investment is part of a broader equity capital fundraise by Polymarket, according to a press release from ICE. The company also expects to purchase up to $40 million in Polymarket securities from existing holders, which would close out its obligations under the deal first announced in October 2025. The valuation of Friday's investment is expected to be disclosed after Polymarket completes its fundraising.

ICE made an initial $1 billion direct investment in Polymarket at that time, in what was the largest single investment ever made in a prediction market company. That deal valued Polymarket at roughly $8 billion pre-investment and established ICE as a global distributor of Polymarket's event-driven data.

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Bitcoin fell to its lowest level in more than two weeks on Friday, dropping below $66,000 as a $14 billion options expiry collided with escalating Middle East tensions and a broader risk-off rout across global markets.

BTC was trading near $65,900 at press time, down roughly 4.5% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Ether slipped to $1,983, also off 4%, while Solana tumbled 5.5% to $83. The total crypto market cap fell 3.4% to $2.36 trillion.

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MARA Holdings, the largest publicly traded Bitcoin miner in the U.S., sold 15,133 BTC for approximately $1.1 billion between March 4 and March 25, deploying the proceeds to retire roughly $1 billion in convertible debt, the company said Thursday.

The transactions represent one of the single largest BTC liquidations by a public miner and mark a decisive break from the accumulation-first playbook MARA pursued through much of 2024 and 2025, when it raised billions through zero-coupon convertible note offerings specifically to buy more Bitcoin.

Debt Slashed by 30%

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