The Senate Banking Committee is holding its markup hearing for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — more commonly known as just the Clarity Act — on Thursday, kicking off a key process for the long-awaited market structure bill.
Over the course of Thursday’s hearing, the 24 Senators on the committee will debate and vote on dozens of proposed amendments to the text released past midnight Tuesday morning. Ultimately, the lawmakers will vote on whether or not to advance the bill to the full Senate.
The bill still has a lengthy journey to becoming a law; if the Banking Committee does advance the bill, it will have to be merged with the Senate Agriculture Committee version of the legislation, debated and voted on the Senate floor, reconciled with the House of Representatives’ version of the bill and voted on in that chamber of Congress before it can go to the president’s desk.
Lawmakers are moving ahead with Thursday’s vote after finding a compromise on stablecoin yield they found acceptable. Senators Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) negotiated the agreement, circulating text at the beginning of the month. Outstanding issues include whether the bill will ultimately include an ethics provision barring senior government officials from having business ties to the crypto industry. According to a survey commissioned by CoinDesk, 73% of Americans believe senior government officials should not have business ties to the industry, referring to senior officials at large. The impetus for including such a provision in the bill is President Donald Trump and his family’s ties to World Liberty Financial and other cryptocurrency businesses.
And while lawmakers have come to a compromise on stablecoin yield, the banking industry as a whole maintains that the stablecoin yield provisions are still too tilted toward the crypto industry. State bank organizations have filed letters to lawmakers, and bankers themselves have sent some 8,000 letters to Senators, a source familiar said.
CoinDesk will be covering the hearing live as the lawmakers work through the hearing.
Nvidia has entered into a partnership with Ineffable Intelligence to build next-generation AI systems built on reinforcement learning.
The London-based AI lab was founded at the end of last year by Google DeepMind architect David Silver and emerged from stealth a few weeks ago. It closed its seed funding round in April with $1.1 billion — the largest seed round ever in Europe.
Nvidia participated in the financing, alongside Google, Sequoia Capital and the U.K. government’s Sovereign AI Fund.
Under the partnership, the companies said they are entering an engineering-level collaboration to build “AI systems that learn by trial and error.”
Unlike AI systems trained on human data, Ineffable’s design focuses on reinforcement learning, which means its AI models learn from repeated experiences.
“The next frontier of AI is superlearners — systems that learn continuously from experience,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a May 13 statement.
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The partners said they will co-develop a pipeline to inform reinforcement learning systems at scale, with engineers from both companies collaborating on the project. Nvidia will provide its Grace Blackwell chips for the effort, along with its Vera Rubin platform.
The goal, the vendors said, is to stay ahead of the new generation of software and hardware needed to shift AI from human-led to experience-led data. “Researchers have largely solved the easier problem of AI: how to build systems that know all the things humans already know,” Silver said in a statement. “But now we need to solve the harder problem of AI: how to build systems that discover new knowledge for themselves. That requires a very different approach — systems that learn from experience.”
The deal is the latest in a sweeping investment blitz from Nvidia, which has committed billions to the AI ecosystem this year alone. This has included chip vendors such as Marvell and photonics companies Lumen and Coherent.
Nvidia has also been increasingly pushing into European AI, backing firms including French AI lab Mistral and UK data center startup Nscale.
Ledger has put plans for a U.S. initial public offering on hold as crypto market conditions weigh on investor demand for new listings, according to people with knowledge of the matter, according to a report from CoinDesk.
The Paris-based hardware wallet maker has not filed a draft S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a step that signals formal IPO intent. The company is weighing alternatives, including a private capital raise, one source said.
Earlier this year, Ledger explored a public listing that could have valued the firm near $4 billion. Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Barclays were engaged to advise on the potential offering, which had been under consideration for 2026.
The decision reflects a broader shift across the digital asset sector, where firms have pulled back from public markets after a wave of listings in 2025. Lower token prices, weaker trading volumes, and uneven equity performance have reduced investor appetite for crypto stocks.
Bitcoin has traded around the $80,000 level in recent weeks after reaching higher levels in late 2025, while ether has held near the mid-$2,000 range. Market activity has also cooled, with declines in spot trading volumes and a drop in venture funding tied to crypto startups.
Other crypto companies are delaying IPOs as well
Other companies have taken similar steps. Kraken paused its multibillion-dollar IPO plans earlier this year despite a confidential filing in 2025. Consensys has also delayed its expected listing timeline, according to separate reports.
BitGo’s January debut offered a test case for public market demand. The crypto custody firm raised about $213 million and priced shares at $18, above its marketed range. The stock rose during its first day of trading but later fell below its offer price and now trades far lower, highlighting volatility tied to crypto equities.
Ledger continues to expand its U.S. presence despite the IPO delay. The company appointed former Circle executive John Andrews as chief financial officer in March and opened a New York office focused on institutional clients and its Ledger Enterprise platform.
The firm aims to serve banks, asset managers, and stablecoin issuers that seek secure infrastructure for digital asset custody. Its core business centers on protecting private keys, which control access to cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether.
Founded in 2014, Ledger has sold more than seven million hardware wallets and secured over $100 billion in digital assets, according to company figures. It reached a $1.5 billion valuation in a 2023 funding round backed by firms including True Global Ventures and 10T Holdings.
While the public listing remains on hold, the company’s expansion signals continued focus on institutional growth as demand for secure crypto infrastructure holds across market cycles.
21Shares launched its Hyperliquid ETF in the US, recording $1.2M in net inflows on its first day of trading.
21Shares’ Hyperliquid ETF debuted in the United States on May 13, 2026, attracting $1.2 million in net inflows during its opening day. The launch marked a significant milestone for Hyperliquid, a blockchain-based exchange protocol, with trading described as a “very solid day” despite volumes trailing recent crypto ETF debuts.
The ETF’s US launch expands institutional access to Hyperliquid’s native token and ecosystem. While initial inflows were solid, the trading volume remained below the levels seen in other recent cryptocurrency ETF launches, indicating measured but steady institutional interest in the asset.
Sources: Cointelegraph
This article was generated automatically by The Defiant’s AI news system from publicly available sources.
A group of 20 victims from five countries or jurisdictions has filed a $525 million lawsuit against Fenwick & West LLP, one of Silicon Valley’s top tech law firms, accusing it of helping conceal the FTX fraud.
The complaint, filed Wednesday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, names the firm alongside six individual defendants. The plaintiffs say they lost their life savings when FTX collapsed, claiming that Fenwick’s involvement gave the exchange a false air of legitimacy that kept them from pulling their money out.
At the center of the case is testimony from Nishad Singh, FTX’s former director of engineering, who pleaded guilty to fraud charges and testified at Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial. Singh said he personally told Fenwick attorneys that customer funds were being misused, and instead of walking away, the firm advised on how to hide it.
The complaint goes further. It says Fenwick attorneys set up North Dimension Inc., a Delaware shell company that posed as an electronics retailer but funneled over $3 billion in stolen customer funds. The firm also allegedly implemented FTX’s Signal auto-delete messaging policy, the same system federal prosecutors said helped the fraud go undetected by regulators and investigators.
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Examiner found Fenwick “intertwined” in FTX’s wrongdoing
A court-appointed bankruptcy examiner, whose report came out in 2024 after reviewing more than 200,000 documents, found that Fenwick created the corporate structures for both FTX and Alameda Research, formed shell entities to obscure money movements, and drafted backdated agreements to cover illicit transfers, the complaint states. The examiner concluded the firm was “deeply intertwined in nearly every aspect of FTX Group’s wrongdoing,” the lawsuit reads.
“These findings are those of a court-appointed officer based on documentary evidence in federal bankruptcy proceedings to which Fenwick was a party,” the lawsuit added.
FTX victims file lawsuit against Fenwick. Source: CourtListener
After FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, Fenwick scrubbed all mentions of the exchange from its website. The firm also quietly hired top-tier law firm defense lawyers at Gibson Dunn before any civil lawsuit was filed against it, per the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs are bringing seven claims against Fenwick, including malpractice, fraud and gross negligence. They are seeking compensatory damages exceeding $525 million, return of all legal fees Fenwick earned from FTX and punitive damages against partners Tyler Newby and Daniel Friedberg for “deliberate and reckless individual professional conduct.”
Related: Sam Bankman-Fried withdraws motion for a new trial, still asks for new judge
Judge denies SBF’s bid for new trial
Last month, a federal judge denied Bankman-Fried’s bid for a new trial, calling his claims of new evidence baseless. Judge Lewis Kaplan, who sentenced the former FTX CEO to 25 years in prison in 2024, said Bankman-Fried’s argument that three former FTX executives could counter the government’s case was without merit, noting that he knew all three witnesses well before the trial.
Bankman-Fried had argued that Ryan Salame and Daniel Chapsky could challenge the government’s claims about FTX’s insolvency, and that Nishad Singh changed his testimony under pressure from prosecutors. Kaplan dismissed those claims as “wildly conspiratorial and entirely contradicted by the record.”
Magazine: How crypto laws changed in 2025 — and how they’ll change in 2026
Coinbase (COIN) is expanding its presence on Hyperliquid (HYPE), one of crypto’s fastest-growing trading networks, by becoming the official treasury deployer of USDC on the blockchain, the companies announced Thursday.
The move gives Coinbase a central role in managing USDC liquidity on Hyperliquid through the network’s Aligned Quote Asset, or AQA, framework. The system connects stablecoin liquidity directly into Hyperliquid’s trading infrastructure and shares reserve yield revenue with the protocol.
As part of the transition, Native Markets, the developer behind Hyperliquid-native stablecoin USDH, agreed to terms granting Coinbase the right to purchase USDH brand assets. USDH will remain redeemable for USDC or fiat during the migration period before the product sunsets over time.
The deal marks another step in Coinbase’s push to expand USDC usage beyond Ethereum (ETH) and centralized exchanges as competition among stablecoin issuers intensifies.
Hyperliquid has become one of the most closely watched projects in crypto this year. The decentralized trading platform built a loyal following by offering perpetual futures trading with low fees, deep liquidity and a fast user experience that rivals centralized exchanges.
Trading activity on the network has surged in recent months as traders shifted toward onchain platforms following renewed interest in decentralized finance. USDC supply on Hyperliquid has roughly doubled year over year to around $5 billion, according to Coinbase.
The network has also become a growing center for speculative trading and token launches. That growth has turned Hyperliquid into a larger player in crypto market structure discussions. Stablecoins act as the core settlement layer for most crypto trading activity, and securing dominant liquidity on a fast-growing exchange ecosystem gives Coinbase and Circle (CRCL) broader reach for USDC adoption.
Native Markets said Coinbase’s involvement could further strengthen Hyperliquid’s position by bringing one of the largest U.S. crypto companies directly into the ecosystem.
The arrangement also reflects a broader shift in crypto infrastructure. Rather than treating stablecoins as separate products, exchanges and blockchain networks increasingly integrate them into trading, collateral and treasury systems designed to operate around the clock.
Coinbase said the partnership would help create a more unified global marketplace for onchain capital markets, where traders can move between crypto assets and fiat-backed stablecoins without leaving blockchain-based platforms.
The Bank of England (BOE) is set to ease proposed restrictions on stablecoin holdings following pressure from digital asset industry participants, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Thursday.
Sarah Breeden, deputy governor for financial stability, said the central bank’s initial plans to restrict individuals to owning up to 20,000 pounds ($27,000) per coin may have been “overly conservative,” according to the FT.
The BOE is “looking very hard at whether there are different ways we can manage what we think is an important risk as stablecoins come into play,” Breeden said in an interview.
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of a traditional financial asset, usually a fiat currency, mostly the U.S. dollar. They have been at the forefront of the development of mainstream digital asset adoption, helped by the establishment of formal regulatory regimes in some major jurisdictions.
The BOE’s proposed restrictions risked preventing the U.K. from being competitive in the digital economy, crypto industry participants have said.
For its part, the central bank had described the proposed cap as “temporary.”
“What we have heard from industry is that the way we have proposed to implement limits is cumbersome operationally for a temporary measure,” Breeden said. “So we are genuinely open to thinking whether there are other ways of achieving our objective.”
The BOE is also ready to lower its planned requirement that at least 40% of stablecoin-backing assets should be deposited with the central bank, earning no interest, and 60% invested in short-term U.K. government debt — requirements that were more restrictive than in markets such as the U.S.
“Not surprisingly, the industry would prefer to hold more interest-earning assets, as that goes to their bottom line,” Breeden said.
“These are important signals from the Bank of England that it is prepared to revisit its stablecoin proposals,” Katie Haries, Coinbase’s head of policy for Europe said in an emailed comment. “We’ve said for a long time that a cap on stablecoin holdings is a cap on innovation, with real and significant risks for UK competitiveness.”
The BOE did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.
Byit, an Egypt born proptech startup, has announced its expansion into the UAE alongside the launch of a new suite of AI powered solutions. These tools are designed to empower real estate brokers and enable more efficient cross border property transactions.
The move comes just months after the strategic funding round backed by A15, Beltone Holding, and a group of angel investors. This investment reinforces confidence in Byit’s vision to modernize real estate brokerage across the region.
As part of its regional expansion strategy, Byit has established Byit Ventures in the UAE. This positioning allows the company to connect Egyptian real estate supply with international demand, particularly from GCC based investors. The expansion is expected to unlock new revenue streams for brokers and facilitate the flow of foreign investment into Egypt’s real estate market.
Byit’s platform leverages artificial intelligence to streamline the brokerage process, enabling agents to better match clients with relevant properties through data driven insights and personalized recommendations. The newly launched tools also support real time market analysis, client lifecycle management, and performance optimization, helping brokers close deals faster and more efficiently.
With a rapidly growing network of over 40,000 freelance brokers, access to more than 450 developer partners, and over 1,000 mapped projects, Byit is building a scalable and transparent alternative to traditional brokerage models. This model prioritizes efficiency, higher commission structures, and data driven decision making.
The company aims to further scale its operations across the Gulf, with plans to expand into Saudi Arabia as part of its next growth phase.
Antoine Azer, Founder of Byit, commented: “Our expansion into the UAE marks a key milestone in Byit’s regional journey. We are building more than just a platform; we are enabling brokers to operate across borders with greater efficiency, transparency, and access to international demand. With AI at the core of our technology, we are redefining how real estate transactions are executed in the region”.
Nader Jimmy, Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at Byit, added: “This expansion, combined with our recent funding, puts us in a strong position to scale across the GCC. By connecting brokers with international buyers and equipping them with advanced AI tools, we are driving higher transaction volumes and unlocking new growth opportunities for the market”.
He continued: “At Byit, we are focused on building the infrastructure that brokers need to succeed in a competitive and fast evolving landscape, from lead generation and data insights to closing deals more efficiently. Our ambition is to become the go to platform for real estate brokers across the region”.
Crypto market analysts say increasing altcoin performance and volumes on Binance, a rising altseason index and a strengthening TOTAL2 macro structure are early signs that the market could enter an altseason in 2026.
Key takeaways:
Altcoin recovery signals emerge, hinting at a potential altseason in 2026.
Rising altcoin trading volume on centralized exchanges and AltSeason Index point to possible capital rotation from Bitcoin.
Altcoin market cap chart shows improving technicals.
Altcoin market shows early signs of recovery
Crypto analyst Darkfost said that macroeconomic uncertainties surrounding the ongoing US and Israel-Iran war saw the altcoin sector correct by more than 50%.
However, the sector appears to be quietly “awakening” as the percentage of altcoins on Binance trading above their 200-day moving average (MA) increased to 21%, levels last seen in September 2025, suggesting that “investor interest in altcoins appears to be gradually returning,” Darkfost said in a Quicktake note on Wednesday, adding:
“This represents a crucial indicator for those looking to gain exposure.”
Performance of altcoins on Binance. Source: CryptoQuant
Darkfost cautioned that it’s still too early to call for an altseason as the metric remains below the levels seen in mid-2025 and Q4 2024, when most altcoins traded between 60-80% above their 200-day MA.
Meanwhile, fellow analyst CryptoOnchain pointed to rising activity on centralized exchanges (CEX) as another sign of increasing momentum in altcoins.
According to the analyst, altcoin trading volume, excluding the five largest cryptocurrencies, has increased steadily over the past few weeks. The chart below shows the appearance of an Altcoin Volume Increasing Trend (yellow bars), which occurred when the 30-day MA for altcoin trading volume crossed above its 365-day MA.
Historically, when this metric flashes yellow, “it signals a clear rotation of capital from major caps into mid and low-cap altcoins,” the analyst said, adding:
“If this momentum is sustained, it could serve as a strong confirmation that a broader altcoin rally is underway.”
CEX volume ratio vs. Top 5 crypto. Source: CryptoQuant
Altcoin season “approaching”
The 90-day AltSeason Index also climbed to 28.6, its highest level in months. The index tracks whether a majority of altcoins outperform Bitcoin over the last 90 days.
“The altseason is starting quietly,” CryptoQuant analyst CW8900 said in a recent Quicktake note, referring to the “rapid rise” in the index over the last few weeks, adding:
“The real AltSeason is approaching.”
Altcoin season index. Source: CryptoQuant
Although the index has been recovering, its value of 28.6 means only 28.6% of the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization have outperformed Bitcoin over the last 90 days. This falls short of the 75% “altseason” threshold, according to Blockchaincenter.
These include ZCash (ZEC), Bittensor (TAO) and Morphor (MORPHOR), which are up 98%, 72% and 68% over the last three months, compared to Bitcoin’s (BTC) 17% gains.
Top 50 Performance over the 90 days. Source: Blockchaincenter
CW8900 added:
“The indicator also shows that there was no real AltSeason in this cycle. The period when the AltSeason Index reached its highest point was early 2024, and even that value was relatively low compared to previous AltSeasons.”
Altcoins show signs of bottoming out
Data from TradingView showed TOTAL2 — the cumulative market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies except Bitcoin — bouncing off the lower trend line of a multi-year broadening wedge that has defined its price action since mid-2022.
In a Wednesday post on X, analyst cryptocupra said TOTAL2’s breakout could mirror the 2021 breakout and rise as high as $8 trillion, adding that “altseason is inevitable.”
Altcoins market cap, TOTAL3. Source: X/1000xgirl
Nebraskangooner’s chart showed TOTAL2 breaking above the upper boundary of an ascending triangle on the daily time frame.
TOTAL2 is “breaking out from this bottoming pattern, the analyst said in a recent X post, adding:
“Altcoin market primed for more upside as long as this breakout holds.”
TOTAL2 daily chart. Source: X/Nebraskangooner
Fellow crypto analyst GorkemCrypto also shared a bullish argument with a 2021 fractal that projects Bitcoin dominance falling to 40% as capital rotates into altcoins.
Bitcoin dominance. Source: X/GorkemCrypto
However, as Cointelegraph reported, the Bitcoin Dominance Index has climbed to its highest level since November 2025. BTC dominance has been climbing since 2023, suggesting that the current trend still favors BTC over altcoins.
