An appellate court has granted a joint request from Ripple Labs and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to pause an appeal in a 2020 SEC case against Ripple amid settlement negotiations. In an April 16 filing in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the court approved a joint SEC-Ripple motion to…
Crypto market maker DWF Labs announced a $25 million investment in World Liberty Financial, the decentralized finance (DeFi) project backed by US President Donald Trump and his sons, as the company expands into the United States with an office in New York City. On April 16, Dubai-based DWF Labs said it had purchased World Liberty…
Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange OKX announced that it is reentering the US market. According to an April 16 blog post, OKX will return to the United States market along with the appointment of former Barclays director Roshan Robert as its US CEO. Robert said in the post: “Today, I’m thrilled to announce the launch of OKX’s…
Italy’s minister of economy and finance warned that US stablecoin policies are more concerning than President Donald Trump’s tariffs, citing the potential for these crypto assets to undermine the euro’s dominance in cross-border payments. Speaking at an event in Milan, Giancarlo Giorgetti said that while trade tariffs dominate headlines, new US policies on dollar-backed stablecoins…
Local governments in China are reportedly seeking ways to offload seized crypto while facing challenges due to the country’s ban on crypto trading and exchanges. The lack of rules around how authorities should handle seized crypto has spawned “inconsistent and opaque approaches” that some fear could foster corruption, lawyers told Reuters for an April 16…
Blockchain infrastructure provider Figment has been selected as the staking provider for 3iQ’s newly approved Solana exchange-traded fund (ETF), underscoring Canada’s continued efforts toward adoption of digital asset financial products. Figment will enable institutional staking for the 3iQ Solana (SOL) Staking ETF, which launches on the Toronto Stock Exchange on April 16 under the ticker…
Synthetic stablecoin developer Ethena Labs is winding down its German operations less than a month after regulators identified “deficiencies” in its dollar-pegged USDe (USDE) stablecoin, signaling heightened scrutiny around crypto assets in Europe’s largest economy. Ethena Labs reached an agreement with Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, also known as BaFin, to cease all operations of…
The crypto industry’s inability to access banking services still concerns many industry observers despite recent policy victories. In past years, financial services firms and banks concerned about fiduciary risk, reporting liabilities and reputational risk often would refuse to offer service to crypto firms — i.e., “debanking” them. Legislative efforts in the United States and Australia…
Only 20 of the 181 Bitcoin service providers registered with El Salvador’s central bank are operational, with the rest failing to meet the country’s requirements under its Bitcoin Law. Local media outlet El Mundo cited data from the Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador, showing that 11% of the service providers are operational. According to…
Tech giant Meta has been given the green light from the European Union’s data regulator to train its artificial intelligence models using publicly shared content across its social media platforms. Posts and comments from adult users across Meta’s stable of platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, along with questions and queries to the company’s…