Trump Media & Technology Group (Nasdaq: DJT), the parent company of the Truth Social platform, has transferred another 2,650 Bitcoin worth approximately $205 million to the exchange Crypto.com, a move widely interpreted as preparation for a potential sale of the company’s digital asset holdings.
The transfer, confirmed by on-chain data tracked by blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain, occurred in two transactions between roughly 1:22 a.m. and 2:22 a.m. GMT on May 22, originating from wallets labeled as Trump Media accounts by Arkham Intelligence.
The company has yet to issue any official statement confirming or denying the intent behind the move.
Trump Media originally purchased 11,542 BTC for approximately $1.37 billion at an average acquisition price of $118,522 per coin.
With Bitcoin trading around $77,000 to $77,300 at the time of the transfer — well below that cost basis — the company is now estimated to be sitting on roughly $455 million in unrealized losses on its cryptocurrency holdings. Following the transaction, Trump Media’s visible on-chain holdings stand at an estimated 6,889 to 6,892 BTC, valued at approximately $533 million at current prices.
This is not the first time the company has moved Bitcoin off its books.
Four months ago, Trump Media shifted 2,000 BTC valued at roughly $175 million — at the time, with Bitcoin trading near $87,378 — in what the company later characterized as a collateral movement.
Trump bitcoin ETF withdrawal
The latest crypto transfer comes just days after Trump Media withdrew its applications for a spot Bitcoin ETF and a combined Bitcoin-Ethereum ETF from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on May 20.
The company’s fund sponsor, Yorkville America, filed for withdrawal, citing a decision not to pursue the public offering “at this time.”
ETF analysts noted that the decision appeared driven less by regulatory headwinds and more by competition from established players like BlackRock and Morgan Stanley, which now dominate what has become a $57 billion Bitcoin ETF market.
The Bitcoin strategy has coincided with a dramatic deterioration in Trump Media’s financials. In its first-quarter 2026 earnings report, the company posted a net loss of $405.9 million on just $871,200 in revenue — a staggering widening from a $31.7 million loss during the same period a year earlier. The bulk of those losses, approximately $368.7 million, stemmed from non-cash unrealized losses on digital assets and equity securities.
DJT shares have fallen roughly 60% over the past 12 months and were trading around $7.95 to $8.15 on Thursday and Friday.
The company, which was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Sarasota, Florida, has struggled to build meaningful advertising revenue even as it has aggressively bet on crypto as a core pillar of its financial strategy.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has pumped the brakes on its highly anticipated “innovation exemption” for tokenized stocks, pushing back the release of the framework as it weighs input from traditional stock exchanges and other market participants wary of the plan’s sweeping implications, according to Bloomberg reporting.
The SEC, under Chair Paul Atkins, was preparing to release the so-called innovation exemption as soon as this week.
The framework would create a new regulatory pathway allowing digital tokens linked to publicly traded company shares to trade on decentralized crypto platforms — 24 hours a day, seven days a week — bypassing the constraints of traditional stock exchanges.
The exemption is part of Atkins’ broader “Project Crypto” initiative, which aims to relax existing crypto restrictions in line with the Trump administration’s pro-crypto agenda.
The SEC was reportedly leaning toward permitting third-party tokens — digital representations of stocks like Apple, Nvidia, or Tesla — to be issued and traded without the consent of the underlying public companies.
This means outside actors, not the issuers themselves, could create blockchain-based wrappers tracking a company’s share price and list them on decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.
These tokens may not carry traditional shareholder rights like voting or dividends, though the SEC is reportedly considering requiring platforms to provide those rights or risk delisting.
Why the SEC is delaying
The timing of the exemption’s release has been pushed back as the agency weighs feedback from stock-exchange officials and other market participants who met with SEC staff in recent days.
The World Federation of Exchanges — whose members include Nasdaq, Cboe, and CME Group — previously warned the SEC in a November 2025 letter that such exemptions could “dilute” existing investor protections and “distort” competition by giving crypto exchanges a regulatory shortcut unavailable to traditional markets.
The group cautioned that granting legitimacy to tokenized stocks before full compliance implementation would “undoubtedly have negative — potentially acute — consequences” for U.S. markets.
The tokenization debate is unfolding against a backdrop of competing visions for the future of U.S. equity markets. Nasdaq, which received SEC approval in March 2026 for its own tokenized securities proposal, is pursuing a different model: one that keeps all trades on-exchange with full shareholder rights intact, built on the DTCC’s enterprise blockchain.
The innovation exemption, by contrast, would sanction a parallel, crypto-native market running alongside the existing system — potentially fragmenting liquidity across dozens of third-party token issuers for the same underlying stock.
Update (May 22 at 7:40 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include statements from Polymarket and Kalshi.
The chair of the US House of Representatives’ Oversight and Government Reform Committee sent letters to the CEOs of Kalshi and Polymarket, questioning the companies’ response to incidents of insider trading on the platform.
In a Friday X post, Committee Chair James Comer confirmed reports that he had sent letters to Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan and Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour, asking them for internal records on how the companies were handling insider trading. The Kentucky lawmaker said there were concerns in Congress over elected officials using “basic insider knowledge” to profit off the government’s actions.
“More than 80 suspiciously timed trades were placed ahead of Iran military operations,” said Comer. “Politicians and government officials with inside information are placing bets and taking profits. This insider trading must end.”
Source: James Comer
The “suspiciously timed trades” to which Comer was referring included those from a May 13 New York Times report, detailing incidents of prediction market users betting on Israel’s military actions against Iran, US President Donald Trump announcing a ceasefire in the country’s war with Iran and event contracts related to congressional elections.
Polymarket said in March that it had updated its approach to potential insider trading on the platform, while Kalshi announced in April that it had banned three US politicians for betting on their own races.
Related: Polymarket team says user funds safe as exploit losses climb above $600K
A Polymarket spokesperson said that the platform “maintains a comprehensive market integrity framework” and it would engage with Comer and the committee on the company’s transparency. A spokesperson for Kalshi said that the company was “proud of [its] comprehensive protections against insider trading” and would likewise engage with US lawmakers.
US soldier who allegedly profited from Venezuela bet still in court
In April, the US Justice Department announced a criminal indictment against Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a soldier who was involved in the military operation that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Prosecutors alleged that Van Dyke used event contracts on Polymarket related to Maduro’s capture to profit by more than $400,000 using classified information.
Van Dyke pleaded not guilty to the charges, which included commodities fraud and the unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain. He was released on $250,000 bail and limited to traveling between areas of North Carolina, California and New York.
Magazine: ETH bears growling, Tom Lee’s buying, XRP to ‘explode’: Market Moves
Bitcoin has dipped below $77,000, signaling that the bears are poised to seize control.
Altcoins are a mixed bag, with some attempting to push through the overhead resistance while others struggle to hold on to the support.
Bitcoin (BTC) has dipped below $77,000, indicating that the bears are attempting to seize control. Glassnode said the true market mean at $78,300 has historically acted as a dividing line between bear and bull market regimes. If the price breaks sharply below the level, it suggests that the recent rally may have been a “local top within the ongoing bear market.”
Institutional investors seem to be selling, as evidenced by the sharp decline in the Coinbase premium over the past few days. LVRG research director Nick Ruck told Cointelegraph that the decline of the Coinbase premium signals selling from large holders, which “could weigh on near-term price momentum across major crypto assets.”
Crypto market data daily view. Source: TradingView
What is the crucial level that suggests the bulls are back in command? Independent analyst Filbfilb said in a post on X that the previous two bear markets had ended after “a >+20% weekly candle and a break of the weekly super trend.” If the current bear trend has to fail, BTC has to rise above the super trend level at $88,000.
Could BTC and select major altcoins hold on to their strong support levels? Let’s analyze the charts of the top 10 cryptocurrencies to find out.
Bitcoin price prediction
BTC turned down at the 20-day exponential moving average ($78,280), suggesting the bears are attempting to take charge.
The $76,000 level is the critical support to watch on the downside, as a close below it would signal an advantage to the bears. That increases the risk of a drop to the support line, which is likely to attract buyers.
Time is running out for the bulls. They will have to push and maintain the BTC price above the 20-day EMA to gain the upper hand. If they do that, the BTC/USDT pair may begin its journey toward $82,000 and eventually reach the crucial $84,000 level.
Ether price prediction
Sellers are attempting to retain Ether (ETH) below the support line, but the bulls have kept up the pressure.
The bulls will have to drive the ETH price above the moving averages to signal a comeback. If they do that, it suggests that the break below the support line may have been a bear trap. The ETH/USDT pair may climb to $2,465 and then to the resistance line of the ascending channel pattern.
Contrary to this assumption, if the price declines from the current level or the 20-day EMA and breaks below $2,077, it would signal that the bears remain in control. That may sink the pair to the $1,916 support.
BNB price prediction
BNB (BNB) rose above the 20-day EMA ($650) on Wednesday, and the bulls are attempting to push the price to $687.
Sellers will attempt to defend the $687 resistance, but if the bulls prevail, the BNB/USDT pair may march toward $730 and then $790. Such a move suggests that the pair may have bottomed out at $570.
The bears are likely to have other plans. They will attempt to defend the overhead resistance and pull the BNB price below the 50-day simple moving average ($631). If they succeed, the pair may extend its stay within the $570 to $687 range for a while longer.
XRP price prediction
XRP (XRP) remains below the moving averages, indicating that the bears are in no mood to let go of their advantage.
Sellers will attempt to strengthen their position by pushing the XRP price below the $1.27 support level. If they manage to do so, the XRP/USDT pair may plummet to $1.11, where buyers are expected to step in.
The first sign of strength will be a close above the downtrend line. The pair may then ascend to $1.61, a crucial level to watch. If buyers overcome the barrier, the pair may surge toward $2.40.
Solana price prediction
Solana’s (SOL) relief rally reached the 20-day EMA ($87.83), where the bears are expected to pose a strong challenge.
If buyers propel the SOL price above the 20-day EMA, it suggests demand at lower levels. The SOL/USDT pair may then climb to the $98 overhead resistance. A close above $98 signals the start of a new up move toward $117.
On the contrary, if the price declines sharply from the 20-day EMA and breaks below $82.65, it suggests the bears remain in control. The pair may then tumble to the $76 support.
Dogecoin price prediction
Dogecoin (DOGE) turned up from the 50-day SMA ($0.10) on Wednesday, but the relief rally is facing resistance at the 20-day EMA ($0.11).
If buyers pierce the 20-day EMA, the DOGE/USDT pair may rise to the $0.12 overhead resistance. Sellers are expected to defend the $0.12 level, as a close above it would signal a short-term trend change. The DOGE price may then soar to $0.14 and later to $0.16.
The 50-day SMA is the critical support to watch on the downside, as a break below it could sink the pair to the $0.09 level.
Hyperliquid price prediction
Hyperliquid (HYPE) continued its uptrend, skyrocketing to a new all-time high of $62.65 on Thursday.
Sellers are fiercely defending the $59.41 level, as they have not allowed the bulls to close above it. The first support on the downside is the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level of $53.29. If the HYPE price rebounds off the $53.29 level with strength, the bulls will again attempt to resume the uptrend. A close above $62.65 opens the door to a rally toward $77.
Alternatively, a close below the $53.29 level suggests that the short-term traders are booking profits. The HYPE/USDT pair may then tumble to the 50% retracement level of $50.41 and then the 20-day EMA ($46.97). The deeper the fall, the longer the time needed for the resumption of the uptrend.
Related: XRP adds 4,300 new wallets in 24 hours, but why is price stuck?
Cardano price prediction
Cardano (ADA) has been trading just below its moving averages, suggesting the bulls have not given up.
A break and close above the 20-day EMA ($0.25) opens the doors for a recovery to $0.29 and, after that, to $0.31. Buyers will have to clear the $0.31 hurdle to signal the start of a new up move.
Instead, if the ADA price turns down from the moving averages, it suggests that the bears remain in control. There is support at $0.24, but if the level breaks down, the ADA/USDT pair may slump to the bottom of the $0.22 to $0.31 range.
Zcash price prediction
Zcash (ZEC) pole vaulted above the $643 resistance on Wednesday, but the bulls are struggling to sustain the higher levels.
The relative strength index is forming a negative divergence, indicating that the bullish momentum is weakening. If the ZEC price closes below the $643 level, it signals the possibility of a deeper correction toward the 20-day EMA ($547).
If the ZEC/USDT pair turns up from the current level or the 20-day EMA, it indicates that the uptrend remains intact. The bulls will then make one more attempt to clear the $690 level, clearing the path for a rally to the $750 resistance.
Bitcoin Cash price prediction
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has risen above the breakdown level of $375, but the rebound lacks strength.
The relief rally is expected to face selling at the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level of $393 and then at the 20-day EMA ($414). If BCH price declines from $393, the risk of a break below $348 increases. The BCH/USDT pair may then resume the downtrend and plunge to $300.
This negative view will be invalidated in the near term if buyers drive and maintain the price above the 20-day EMA.
The long-awaited U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rule to begin allowing tokenization of securities — a change that could have profound effects on the financial markets — has been facing the contentious perception it’ll allow synthetic tokens, but a commissioner has taken the unusual step to post statements about the unpublished rule to potentially counter those views.
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who had pushed for safe harbors for tokenization well before the arrival of the new chairman under President Donald Trump, issued a pair of statements on social media site X on Thursday and Friday to clarify what she expects from the rule that’s set to emerge soon. Her posts suggested that the proposed rule won’t pave the way for synthetic tokenized securities — third-party tokenization that references a security but doesn’t carry the equity, voting and other rights associated with the security.
Peirce, the commissioner behind the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, wrote that she expects the coming rule — now potentially delayed — would be “limited in scope & would facilitate trading only of digital representations of the same underlying equity security that an investor could purchase in the secondary market today, not synthetics.”
Peirce posted again to explain what she meant by synthetics, directing people to read the SEC’s January statement on tokenized securities, “which distinguishes tokenized versions of issuer-sponsored stocks and of stocks that SEC-registered firms hold for their customers from synthetic instruments that provide exposure to stocks.”
The flames had been fanned by Bloomberg News reporting this week that predicted the agency was leaning toward including a path for synthetic tokens tradeable on decentralized crypto platforms. Peirce said she appreciates the public’s keen interest in the rule “but not the hyperbole” about it.
Peirce did not return a request for comment about her posts.
Bloomberg had also predicted that the rule could come as early as this week, but it reported in a subsequent story on Friday that the release was being further delayed.
The consequential rule will represent the most meaningful step the SEC has taken to-date to forge a new regulatory approach to crypto trading in the U.S. Chairman Paul Atkins has been saying for months that his agency is poised to release the wide-ranging proposals to provide regulatory exemption in the crypto space.
He outlined some of the effort in a March speech at the DC Blockchain Summit, saying the agency was contemplating safe harbors from certain regulatory demands for various crypto activities, including giving startups something like four years of registration exemption “provide developers with a regulatory runway during which they could work to reach maturity”; a “fundraising exemption” for certain crypto assets in which “entrepreneurs could raise up to a defined amount (say $75 million) during any 12-month period”; and an “investment contract safe harbor” to keep certain crypto assets from being defined as a regulated security, with the safe harbor triggering when the issuer finishes all their managerial efforts.
Atkins said at the time that Commissioner Peirce’s “fingerprints are all over” the SEC’s rulemaking.
While the SEC — alongside its sister agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — has been writing crypto rules, Atkins and CFTC Chairman Mike Selig have said they’re doing so with the understanding that Congress is right behind them with the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act to put some of the same ideas into permanent law.
“Only Congress can ensure that regulation in this area is future-proofed through comprehensive market structure legislation,” Atkins said in March.
UPDATE (May 22, 2026, 18:53 UTC): Adds delay of the rule release.
When Rep. Matt Van Epps helped lead the American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026 this week, he framed the bill not as an abstract national security measure — but as a direct extension of what he sees happening in his own backyard.
“Nashville is one of the nation’s leading Bitcoin hubs,” Van Epps said in a statement to Bitcoin Magazine, pointing to Bitcoin Park, the city’s growing digital asset community, and the annual Bitcoin conference, set to return to Nashville in 2027.
“Nashville is quickly emerging as one of the nation’s leading Bitcoin hubs, with a growing digital asset community, institutions like Bitcoin Park, and the annual Bitcoin conference, which is scheduled to come back to Nashville in 2027,” Van Epps said. “Supporting this bill means supporting the financial innovation taking place in my district.”
For the freshman congressman from Tennessee’s 7th District — a West Point graduate and combat helicopter pilot who won his seat in a December 2025 special election — this is personal. The bill is, in his telling, a statement about what his district already represents.
Van Epps co-led the legislation alongside Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK), who introduced the American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026, known as ARMA. The bill would codify President Trump’s March 2025 executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve — giving it the force of statute rather than leaving it to the discretion of future administrations.
The reserve would sit inside the U.S. Department of the Treasury and hold BTC seized through federal law enforcement forfeitures and civil penalties.
Van Epps’ central argument for the legislation is fiscal. “With a national debt of $39 trillion, this is an essential piece of legislation,” he said. Under ARMA, any future sale of Bitcoin from the reserve would be permitted for only one purpose: reducing the national debt. No transfers to other government programs, no discretionary spending — just debt reduction. The reserve, he stressed, “would be established without cost to American taxpayers”.
The bill also draws a firm line on property rights. Van Epps and Begich included language affirming that the federal government cannot interfere with an individual’s right to own, transfer, or self-custody digital assets — a provision that reflects the libertarian undertow running through much of the pro-Bitcoin caucus in Congress.
Van Epps: Bitcoin can fix some problems in the U.S.
For Van Epps, the argument goes beyond portfolio management. He described the reserve as something with the potential to “solve major problems” for the country, with the national debt chief among them. Bitcoin’s fixed supply and its appreciation over time, in his view, give the United States a tool that gold certificates and traditional reserves cannot match.
The bill requires BTC in the reserve to be held for a minimum of 20 years — a provision designed to take the asset out of short-term political calculations and treat it as a generational balance sheet decision.
Quarterly public Proof of Reserve reports and independent third-party audits would accompany the reserve, adding a layer of statutory transparency that the existing executive order lacks.
Eighteen original co-sponsors signed on, stretching across nine states. The Senate remains the harder terrain — competing crypto legislation is moving through committee there, and the path to 60 votes is unclear.
NEAR Protocol (NEAR) displayed strength on Friday, rising 34% over the last 24 hours to $2.32, leading artificial intelligence-based tokens in a rally fueled by NEAR’s network upgrades and NVIDIA’s bullish revenue forecast.
NEAR is trading 50% higher than its price seven days ago and has gained a whopping 115% over the last 90 days.
Key takeaways:
NEAR price surged 50% in seven days, hitting six-month highs as AI crypto tokens rallied on strong market momentum.
NEAR Protocol upgrades focused on AI, privacy and scaling boosted investor confidence and trading volume above $1 billion.
A breakout from a multi-year wedge pattern puts $5.75 in focus if NEAR clears resistance between $2.60 and $3.
NEAR price rallies to six-month highs
Data from TradingView shows that NEAR’s recovery began on Monday, rising 58% to a six-month high of $2.34 on Friday from a low of $1.48.
Accompanying NEAR’s price growth is an uptick in its trading volume, which has increased by 190% to $1.15 billion over the last 24 hours, reinforcing the intensity of the buyers.
The altcoin’s jump above $2.30 triggered over $9.85 million in short liquidations, as those betting against the price were caught off guard.
The gains come after NEAR Protocol announced of major upgrades focused on privacy, AI integration, and network scaling.
Source: X/NEAR Protocol
Aurora, the Ethereum-compatible scaling solution built on NEAR, also announced the update of its Aurora Intents Widget. The update integrated ADI Chain as a new entry point, enabling smoother cross-chain swaps, deposits, and application flows for users.
Source: Aurora
These developments demonstrate ongoing technical progress within the NEAR Protocol ecosystem, potentially increasing demand for blockspace and the NEAR token.
NEAR price rallies as AI tokens recover
NEAR is not the only AI-themed token outperforming the crypto market today. Other cryptocurrencies in the AI sector have witnessed impressive 24-hour gains, including Grass (GRASS), OpenServe (SERVE) and Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (FET), which have gained over 27%, 21% and 11% over the day, respectively.
Performance of top AI tokens by market capitalization. Source: CoinMarketCap
Notably, the surge in AI tokens has also been accompanied by an increase in their total market value. The market capitalization of AI and big data crypto projects and tokens has risen by 8% over the past 24 hours to $21.44 billion at the time of publication, reflecting renewed investor confidence in the sector.
Market capitalization and volume of AI and big data tokens market. Source: CoinMarketCap
Broader sector momentum was fueled by positive signals from Nvidia’s AI dominance and revenue forecasts. Nvidia, which maintains an 81–90% share of the AI accelerator market, reported massive profits of approximately $81.6 billion in Q1 2026 and raised its projected revenue opportunity through 2027 to $1 trillion.
Source: X/Cointelegraph
Historically, Nvidia events have triggered strong rallies in NEAR price, as seen in February when the altcoin soared 58% following the company’s Q4 2025 earnings report.
How high can NEAR price go?
NEAR’s latest rally saw it break out of a multi-year falling wedge that has capped the price since late 2024.
The NEAR/USD pair now faces stiff resistance at the $2.60-$3.0 supply zone, where major moving averages sit, as shown on the weekly chart below.
A break above this level would clear the path toward the measured target of the wedge at $5.75, roughly 160% above the current price. The relative strength index has increased to 63, indicating increasing upward momentum.
In an X post on Tuesday, MN Capital founder Michael van de Poppe said NEAR is displaying “one of the most bullish charts” in the market, adding that a continuation was in the cards as long as it held $1.40 as support.
“The first real resistance zones for $NEAR are at $2 and $2.25-$2.50,” Van de Poppe said in a follow-up post on Thursday, adding “it’s clearly trending higher,” with the next target near $2.75.
NEAR/USD daily chart. Source: X/Michael van de Poppe
Latest developments: Emmer joined CoinDesk’s The Policy Protocol and said the Senate’s bipartisan movement on the Clarity Act shows crypto legislation still has momentum despite growing uncertainty in Washington.
Emmer pointed to the Senate Banking Committee’s 15-9 vote advancing the bill, arguing support extended beyond Republicans.
He said the House has spent years refining crypto market structure legislation and described CLARITY as the fifth or sixth iteration of the effort.
Emmer said lawmakers are trying to create clear distinctions between digital assets regulated as securities, commodities or cash equivalents.
He predicted Congress would ultimately send the legislation to President Trump’s desk.
The debate: Emmer forcefully defended the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA), which would shield some noncustodial software developers from money transmitter rules.
Law enforcement groups have raised concerns that the provision could weaken oversight or hamper investigations involving decentralized finance tools.
Emmer called those objections a “red herring” aimed at slowing the broader Clarity Act.
He argued developers who do not custody customer funds should not be treated as money transmitters.
Emmer said inconsistent state-by-state treatment of blockchain software developers is creating legal uncertainty for innovators.
What this means: Emmer argued the U.S. needs clearer crypto rules to remain competitive globally.
He said companies want to innovate in the U.S. but need to understand “the rules of the road.”
Emmer criticized former SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s enforcement approach under the Biden administration.
He said the Clarity Act is designed to establish clearer distinctions between assets regulated by the SEC and the CFTC.
Emmer argued the legislation would encourage more companies to operate inside the U.S. regulatory framework.
Reading between the lines: Emmer sought to frame crypto policy as a bipartisan issue rather than a partisan fight.
He said “Republicans and Democrats agree on this stuff” despite ongoing Senate negotiations.
Emmer argued some senators are using negotiations around the bill to gain leverage on unrelated issues.
He said the crypto industry supports candidates based on policy positions rather than party affiliation.
Emmer described crypto and digital assets as part of the future of “21st century finance.”
Worth watching: Emmer said Congress is still debating how much authority regulators like the SEC and CFTC should have over crypto markets.
Renato Mariotti raised questions about whether the CFTC would need additional funding or staffing under a new regulatory framework.
Emmer said he favors “light touch regulation” and less authority for federal agencies.
He said Congress should focus on consumer protections and preventing fraud.
Emmer argued digital assets can provide more transparency than cash-based transactions.
Security exploits are weighing on institutional appetite for decentralized finance (DeFi), even as broader crypto adoption continues through stablecoins and tokenized assets.
In an April research note, JPMorgan analysts said that bridge security remains a challenge for the industry, raising questions on whether DeFi can grow to support further institutional adoption.
The recent exploit on the Versus-Ethereum bridge was the eighth major attack against DeFi bridges in 2026 so far, with cumulative losses totalling $328.6 million.
DeFi bridges remain prime targets for hackers seeking to steal millions of dollars. Source: PeckShield
Misha Putiatin, CEO of smart contract security firm Statemind and co-founder of DeFi protocol Symbiotic, said he regularly fields calls from major traditional institutions exploring DeFi exposure, often with bad timing.
“Five minutes before I have a call with a big traditional institution, another big hack,” he told Cointelegraph.
“They sit there looking at me like, ‘Is this normal? Is this every day for you?”
Still, institutions may get into DeFi, but the terms on which they arrive could reshape it into something that looks a lot more like traditional finance than the open, permissionless system its builders envisioned.
DeFi has become too complex for DYOR
At the beginning of April, North Korea’s Lazarus Group was implicated in the $285 million Drift Protocol exploit, carried out through a months-long social engineering campaign in which infiltrators approached Drift contributors at an in-person crypto conference.
The same actors were blamed for the KelpDAO breach a few weeks later, which drained about $290 million from the protocol’s cross-chain bridge.
Total value locked across DeFi fell to around $86 billion from just under $100 billion in two days following the KelpDAO hack in April. The outflows came from pools with no direct exposure to compromised assets, said JPMorgan analysts.
DeFi pools lost around $14 billion following the attack on KelpDAO. Source: DefiLlama
Related: Wall Street’s tokenization boom has a liquidity problem: Axis CEO
Putiatin said the complexity of modern DeFi makes it nearly impossible for ordinary users to know where their risk actually sits. “Do your own research doesn’t work anymore,” he said. “It hasn’t been working for a really long time.”
He explained that the system has become too interconnected and complex to trace.
For example, when a user deposits Ether (ETH) to earn yield while never touching any other token, they can still get hit by a breach on a bridge connected to a token they’ve never even heard of.
Do your own research, or DYOR, is an industry mantra born in the early days of Bitcoin, when protocols were simple enough that a user could read a whitepaper and make an informed decision.
Today, with smart contracts running up to tens of thousands of lines of code, protocols layered on top of one another, and new services and tokens launching at breakneck speed, that expectation has become almost impossible to meet.
“I’m not ever expecting people that just want to invest their money to ever figure out every part of the stack themselves,” Putiatin said.
“I’m not going to spend the next two years of my life trying to figure out how to get a 6% yield,” he added, claiming that traditional finance alternatives are close enough in return that the DeFi’s security risk rarely makes sense for most investors.
A shrinking premium for an unquantifiable risk
Tether (USDT), the world’s largest stablecoin, offers a supply APY of 2.74% on Aave’s Ethereum market, the biggest DeFi lending protocol. That’s below the 3.57% available on a three-month US Treasury bill. Circle’s USDC (USDC) fares better at 4.14%.
Supply and borrow APY on Aave’s Ethereum market. Source: Aave
Related: Why stablecoins and SWIFT may have to coexist
Putiatin said institutions see this clearly, even if they struggle to quantify it precisely. The problem is that institutions have no reliable framework for pricing the hack risk sitting underneath them.
“They can’t price risk properly,” he said. “So they discount the yield we provide by a lot.”
DeFi yields have compressed as the market has matured, eroding the premium that once justified the risk.
At the same time, the hacks have not slowed down. For investors used to underwriting risk with actuarial precision, shrinking upside and unquantifiable downside is a hard sell.
The cost of DeFi’s seat at the table
Putiatin’s benchmark for when DeFi has genuinely turned a corner is an onchain insurance system capable of underwriting hack risk across the entire ecosystem and pricing it with the kind of actuarial precision that institutions require.
“When we have circuit breakers, curators that can do due diligence, and a framework for that — we will get the fourth one that we desperately need as an industry,” he said. “We will get insurance.”
DeFi has lost over $7.76 billion to exploits, according to DeFiLlama data tracing back to 2016. Though DeFi insurance providers exist, their capacity remains too small to backstop anything approaching institutional scale.
Without that infrastructure, institutions that do come in will do so on their own terms, demanding full know-your-customer checks, custodial controls and tokens that can be frozen at any time.
The open, permissionless architecture that made DeFi worth building gets stripped to satisfy compliance requirements.
“All of the benefits that we have as an industry, they kind of go away,” he said. “Blockchain becomes just a database.”
It is an outcome Putiatin finds more troubling than the hacks themselves. The hacks, at least, are a problem the industry can work on. A version of DeFi that institutions have hollowed out to make it safe enough for their mandates is a surrender of everything the technology was supposed to change.
Magazine: 5 tech predictions the mainstream media got horribly wrong
The U.S. House Oversight Committee plans a probe into the largest prediction market platforms over suspicions that government employees could be exploiting classified information for personal gain.
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is seeding the internal records from the CEOs of Polymarket and Kalshi to determine if government employees are using insider knowledge to profit from policy and geopolitical and military operations, he said on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Friday.
“There’s a concern now that members of Congress, members of the president’s administration, any type of government employee, can use basic insider knowledge and make huge profits on anything government-related,” Comer told CNBC.
“So we want to not only launch an investigation to see how widespread this has been thus far, but also to prove a case that we’ve got to pass some type of legislation,” Comer added. “And I think it wouldn’t be too much to ask to say members of Congress can’t participate in the predictions market, nor can government employees or people in the president’s administration.”
Comer’s probe is the most recent in a series of attempts by Congress to investigate prediction markets and bring insider trading under control.
In letters sent Friday to Polymarket’s Shayne Coplan and Kalshi’s Tarek Mansour, Comer demanded clarity on how the platforms handle identity verification, enforce geographic restrictions and flag anomalous trading activity.
Prediction markets, which surged in popularity in recent years, have drawn scrutiny from federal and state lawmakers and regulators, who worry the platforms are ripe for exploitation by bad actors with national security clearances.
Prediction market volumes could peak to roughly $1 trillion by 2030, as the sector evolves from niche wagering into broad-based “information markets” spanning sports, crypto, politics and the economy, according to a Wall Street broker Bernstein report in April. Volumes hit $51 billion last year and could reach about $240 billion in 2026.
The House probe follows a heated U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Wednesday, where lawmakers from both parties heavily scrutinized prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Crypto.com. Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) blasted the industry for enabling cheating scandals across major sports leagues, warning that the opportunity to profit on event contracts tempts athletes and officials to manipulate outcomes. Meanwhile, Senator John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) accused the firms’ aggressive social media marketing of “preying on our young people” and fostering problem gambling.
Nicolas Vaiman, co-founder and CEO of onchain intelligence layer Bubblemaps, expressed deep concern over the national security implications of a new wave of insider trading in an interview with CoinDesk.
He warned that if those observing the predictions markets can spot irregular trades, so can enemies of the United States. He and his team found 80 bets on Polymarket with a 98% win rate, which he said is statistically impossible to achieve. “Not even luck can explain those wins.”
