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Sen. Tillis Won’t Back Crypto Bill Without Ethics Provision

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Sen. Tillis Won’t Back Crypto Bill Without Ethics Provision

Republican US Senator Thom Tillis said he won’t support the Senate’s crypto market structure bill unless it includes ethics provisions limiting how White House officials can use crypto.

“There has to be ethics language in the bill before it leaves the Senate, or I’ll go from one of the people working on negotiating it to voting against it,” Tillis told Politico on Monday.

Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego said that there is “no final bill — there is no final movement — unless there is a bipartisan agreement when it comes to the ethics provision.”

Tillis, who is retiring early next year, is a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee, which is key to advancing the Senate bill. The House passed a version of it, called the CLARITY Act, in July.

Thom Tillis, pictured at a meeting in 2024, says he won’t support a crypto bill without an ethics provision. Source: City of Greenville, North Carolina

The bill carves up crypto regulation between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission and has been plagued by delays as lawmakers and lobbyists seek to add provisions on ethics and stablecoin yield payments.

Democratic lawmakers have heavily criticized the Trump family’s expanding crypto businesses and have sought to use the bill to crack down on a perceived conflict of interest.

Related: Canada advances bill to ban crypto political donations

Now, lawmakers are reportedly saying talks on the ethics provisions are moving forward, but it’s not clear what the language will be.

“We’re making progress,” Democratic Senator Adam Schiff told Politico. “We have been talking for a long time without making much progress, and now that other parts of the bill are starting to come together, we’re narrowing our differences.”

Schiff said earlier this year that Democrats want “a ban on sponsoring, endorsing or issuing digital assets that applies to all federal employees,” including the president, who has backed a memecoin and non-fungible tokens bearing his name and likeness.

Magazine: Will the CLARITY Act be good — or bad — for DeFi?

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Bitcoin Juggles $120 Oil and Fed’s ‘Most Hawkish’ Interest-Rate Pause

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Bitcoin Juggles $120 Oil and Fed’s ‘Most Hawkish’ Interest-Rate Pause

Bitcoin (BTC) failed to recover new support on Thursday as oil hit its highest levels in nearly four years.

Key points:

  • Bitcoin struggles to recoup recent lost ground as geopolitical factors weigh on momentum.
  • UK Brent crude oil spot markets record their highest levels since June 2022.
  • The Federal Reserve’s interest-rate decision is called Chair Jerome Powell’s “most hawkish in years.”

Bitcoin falls on “most hawkish” Fed meeting

Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD circling $76,000, down around 2% from the previous day’s high.

BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

A combination of high oil prices and the US Federal Reserve’s “most hawkish” meeting in years kept risk-asset optimism low.

Both were a result of the ongoing US-Iran war, which showed no sign of resolution.

“Iran can’t get their act together. They don’t know how to sign a nonnuclear deal. They better get smart soon!” US President Donald Trump wrote in one of his latest posts on Truth Social.

Source: Truth Social

Amid the tensions, spot Brent crude oil passed $120 per barrel for the first time since June 2022.

“Asia is facing its worst even crisis in history and Europe has just weeks worth of jet fuel left. The US is exporting record amounts of oil as a result,” trading resource The Kobeissi Letter responded in a post on X. 

“Inflation is back.”

Spot Brent crude oil one-month chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Inflation worries were among the guiding factors for Fed officials at Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, where they left interest rates unchanged.

While markets expected that outcome, commentators noted a worsening outlook for risk appetite due to changing Fed policy.

Nic Puckrin, CEO and cofounder of crypto education platform Coin Bureau, described the FOMC meeting — the last with Jerome Powell as Chair — as his “most hawkish in years.”

“For the first time since 1992, 4 Federal Reserve members dissented the decision,” he noted.

US two-year Treasury yield versus Fed funds rate futures. Source: Nic Puckrin/X

Puckrin suggested that the Fed’s “soft landing” policy on inflation had also gone. 

“Rates held for the third straight meeting, but the direction of travel just changed,” he summarized.

Source: Truth Social

Trump repeated attacks on Powell after the decision, calling him “too late” in cutting rates ahead of the likely takeover by Kevin Warsh.

As Cointelegraph reported, Trump said that he “would” be disappointed if Warsh did not cut rates at his first FOMC meeting in June.

BTC price 21-day trend line hangs in the balance

BTC price action still managed to respect the 21-day simple moving average (SMA) near $75,500 overnight.

Related: First 21-week trend line reclaim since October 2025: Five things to know in Bitcoin this week

That support line was the key question for trading resource Material Indicators on low time frames.

“Will support hold?” it queried in an X post alongside order-book liquidity data for Binance.

The data showed whale order classes broadly buying the dip, while smaller order classes reduced exposure.

BTC/USDT order-book data (Binance) with whale orders. Source: Material Indicators/X

This article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or recommendations. All investments and trades carry risk; readers are encouraged to conduct independent research.

Goldman Sachs withdraws Anthropic AI access for Hong Kong bankers, report says – Finsight.news

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Goldman Sachs withdraws Anthropic AI access for Hong Kong bankers, report says – Finsight.news

Goldman Sachs has removed access to Anthropic’s AI models for its banking staff in Hong Kong, reported Reuters citing a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

The source said employees in Hong Kong had previously been able to use Anthropic’s Claude model through an internal AI platform, but that access has been unavailable in recent weeks.

The Financial Times first reported the change, citing people familiar with the situation.

According to the FT, Goldman took the step after adopting a strict reading of its contract with Anthropic following consultations with the AI company.

The newspaper said the bank concluded its Hong Kong employees should not be permitted to use Anthropic products.

The Reuters source said other widely used AI models, including Gemini and ChatGPT, remained accessible on the bank’s internal platform.

Anthropic’s latest AI model, Mythos, has attracted attention from global banks and financial regulators because of concerns about possible risks to banking systems.

Reuters reported last week that the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said some lenders were considering extra safeguards in response to changing cyber security threats linked to advanced AI models.

Reuters said it could not verify whether other banks or companies had also restricted access in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong does not currently appear on Anthropic’s list of markets where its API and Claude.ai are officially available, according to the company’s disclosures.

The move comes against a backdrop of growing friction between the US and China over AI technology, data security and access to high-end computing tools.

Although AI models such as ChatGPT and Claude, developed by US companies, are banned in mainland China, Hong Kong has largely remained outside those restrictions, with access limits determined by the US companies themselves.

An Anthropic spokesperson told the FT that its Claude models had never been officially “supported” in Hong Kong, while declining to comment further.

Several major AI groups have raised concerns that their models could be used by Chinese competitors for training purposes.

In 2024, OpenAI restricted traffic from China to its application programming interface, which developers use to incorporate its AI models into other products.

WLFI races toward 62 billion token unlock with near-unanimous vote

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WLFI races toward 62 billion token unlock with near-unanimous vote

World Liberty Financial’s proposal to unlock 62 billion WLFI tokens is already set to pass, with early votes blowing past quorum and delivering near-unanimous support.

Under the plan, founders, team members, and partners would burn 10% of their holdings, roughly 4.5 billion WLFI, to begin unlocking the remaining 40.7 billion tokens over a five-year schedule following a two-year cliff.

No tokens would reach the market for at least two years due to cliff periods. The shift marks a structural change in how WLFI is valued, replacing open-ended lockups with predictable future supply and creating a clearer exit path for holders who previously had none.

This move seems to have near-unanimous support, with 99.5% voting in favor.

The vote also highlights the structure of WLFI’s governance.

Participation levels align with prior proposals, suggesting that a relatively small group of large holders can push through major tokenomic changes with limited opposition.

Voting power is heavily concentrated among a small group of large holders. The largest wallet alone accounts for nearly 13% of votes cast, and the top four together control roughly 40% of total voting power so far, enough to heavily influence the outcome on their own.

WLFI also faces a lawsuit from Tron founder Justin Sun, who alleges the project froze his tokens and stripped his governance rights, claims the company has denied.

Tillis to Push Senate Banking Markup on Crypto Bill

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Tillis to Push Senate Banking Markup on Crypto Bill

US Senator Thom Tillis says he will push the Senate Banking Committee to advance the stalled crypto market structure bill, as the text of the bill has made progress and is ready for another vote.

Tillis, a key Senate Banking Republican, told reporters on Wednesday that he would ask Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott “to move forward with scheduling a markup” when the Senate is back in session on May 11.

“I think that we’ve made a lot of progress,” Tillis said. “But at the end of the day, until you have a forcing mechanism of a markup, everybody that really doesn’t want it done is going to have one more thing that they want to talk about, and I think it’s time to get it before the committee, move it forward.”

The Senate’s crypto market structure bill would lay out how the US’s two most influential financial market regulators would oversee crypto. The House passed its version of the bill, the CLARITY Act, in July, but the Senate’s version has been plagued by delays as lawmakers and lobbyists have sought to edit provisions.

Thom Tillis holding a press gaggle with reporters on Wednesday. Source: Chase Williams

The Senate Banking Committee delayed the bill’s markup in January after major crypto lobbyist Coinbase pulled its support over a provision banning crypto exchanges from paying stablecoin yields.

Banking lobbyists have fought to keep the provision in the legislation, arguing that banning third parties from paying stablecoin yields closes a perceived loophole in the GENIUS Act, which prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying yield.

“I believe we’ve heard the concerns [and] addressed a lot of the concerns of the bank,” Tillis said. “There may be a few more that we can get there if they want to come and work in good faith; otherwise, I’m going to encourage the chair to move forward with the markup.”

Related: Key US senator lifts block on Trump’s Fed pick Kevin Warsh

Tillis added that he hoped to publicly release the legislative text at least four days before the markup, after crypto and banking stakeholders are given a preview.

Other provisions at issue in the bill, which senators have worked to resolve, concern ethics and protecting software developers.

On Tuesday, Politico reported that Tillis said the crypto bill would “need to address the law enforcement concerns” around a provision that would protect crypto software developers from prosecution if others commit illegal activity on their platforms.

Tillis told reporters on Wednesday that he was “generally in support” of the progress Senator Cynthia Lummis had made on the provision.

On Monday, Tillis backed a demand popular among Senate Banking Democrats, saying he wouldn’t support the bill unless it included ethics provisions limiting how government officials can use and promote crypto.

“There has to be ethics language in the bill before it leaves the Senate, or I’ll go from one of the people working on negotiating it to voting against it,” Tillis said.

Magazine: Will the CLARITY Act be good — or bad — for DeFi?

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Korea Ramps Up 2027 Crypto Tax Prep Amid Abolition Push

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Korea Ramps Up 2027 Crypto Tax Prep Amid Abolition Push

Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure

South Korea’s tax authority has begun preparations to implement its 20-22% tax on crypto income starting next year, fast-tracking the development of a tax base and tracking system to end years of delays for the Income Tax Act.

NTS Begins 2027 Crypto Tax Rollout Prep

On Wednesday, South Korea’s National Tax Service (NTS) announced it has begun “full-scale preparations” to implement the long-delayed Income Tax Act in January of next year, according to local reports.

In an NTS briefing, Park Jeong-yeol, Director of the Individual Taxation Bureau at the National Tax Service, affirmed that the agency plans to secure data from exchanges and establish a taxation system to ensure smooth execution of the comprehensive income tax filing scheduled for May 2028.

Since a law has been enacted to tax virtual asset income generated starting next year, we are preparing to accept filings starting with the 2028 (May) comprehensive income tax filing.

Under the Income Tax Act, crypto assets will be subject to a 20% income tax rate, up to 22% including local taxes, starting January 1, 2027, for profits exceeding 2.5 million won annually.

The tax authority reportedly intends to establish a tax base by formally receiving pertinent data from virtual asset exchanges, including Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax. It also aims to establish a guidance framework specifically for taxpayers subject to virtual asset income tax and outline criteria for capital gains calculations.

In addition, the NTS is accelerating the development of its tax infrastructure. Last month, the agency announced it would develop an AI-driven system, the “Comprehensive System for Virtual Asset Transaction Analysis,” to track crypto investment gains.

As reported by Bitcoinist, the agency aims to launch the project’s pilot in November and a full-scale launch by the end of the year. It also plans to complete the system within the year by developing information exchange functions based on the Crypto-Asset Automatic Information Exchange System (CARF).

Lawmakers Push To Abolish Crypto Taxation

An official from the NTS said that they “plan to compile data from exchanges by January 2028 (tentative), review various cases to finalize the tax collection system, and complete preparations so that comprehensive income tax returns can be filed in May of the same year.”

Nonetheless, political uncertainties have made it unclear whether the tax will be implemented. Notably, the framework was initially expected to be implemented in 2022 but has been postponed three times.

Now, the People Power Party (PPP) has pushed to abolish the tax. PPP’s floor leader, Song Eun-seok, proposed a bill last month to amend the long-delayed Income Tax Act, seeking to remove all provisions governing the taxation of crypto assets in the legislation.

The lawmaker argued that imposing a separate income tax on crypto assets raises concerns regarding the fairness and consistency of the tax system, noting that the financial investment income tax was abolished to promote capital market development while protecting investors.

The Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) acknowledged PPP’s concerns about tax equity and the consistency of the Korean tax system. DPK’s Senior Deputy Floor Leader for Policy, Kim Han-kyu, affirmed that the ruling party would review the amendment now that it has been introduced.

However, he noted that the two parties previously clashed over delaying the Income Tax Acts, which may signal the proposed amendment could receive limited support from the DPK.

crypto

The total crypto market is at $2.53 trillion on the one-week chart. Source: TOTAL on TradingView

Featured Image from Unsplash.com, Chart from TradingView.com

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XO Market bets on user-generated prediction markets to rival Polymarket and Kalshi

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XO Market bets on user-generated prediction markets to rival Polymarket and Kalshi

*** NOT FOR PUBLICATION – EMBARGOED TILL 5AM ET APRIL 30 ****

XO Market is betting that the future of prediction markets won’t be dictated by centralized teams deciding what people can trade on, but by users themselves.

The startup, which just closed a $6 million seed round led by 20VC, Picus Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Venture Together and a group of angels including Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins, is positioning itself as the “YouTube of prediction markets,” according to co-founder Ali Habbabeh.

“Today’s major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket act more like Netflix,” Habbabeh told CoinDesk in an interview. “They decide what markets exist. We’ve flipped that model entirely. On XO, users create the markets themselves.”

The distinction is critical. While incumbents rely on internal teams to curate and list prediction markets, XO allows individuals or companies to spin up their own markets, set parameters and fees, and let others trade on them. The result, Habbabeh said, is a broader, and often more creative, set of opportunities.

“We believe the future of prediction markets is user-generated. The best markets aren’t decided by a platform, they emerge from the community.”

Mainnet beta launch

The model appears to be gaining traction. Since starting its mainnet beta in mid-November, XO has generated more than $150 million in trading volume, attracted over 30,000 users and seen more than 600 user-created markets. An earlier pilot began in April 2025 with a testnet rollout.

“The metrics look strong because the incentives are aligned,” Habbabeh said. “If you create a compelling market, people trade on it. If you don’t, it dies naturally.”

That “natural selection” dynamic may be a double-edged sword. Even Habbabeh points out that competing user-generated platforms like Nine Lives and Warm Protocol struggled to convert the concept into meaningful liquidity, resulting in inactive markets or minimal trading activity.

It is unlikely that Polymarket or Kalshi will offer user-generated markets, according to Habbabeh, because they would need to find market makers willing to provide liquidity for thousands of different events and would have to alter their infrastructure. Their current models are also extremely profitable, he added.

Prediction markets are gaining traction beyond their niche origins, drawing increased interest from retail traders and institutional participants alike as a new venue for pricing uncertainty. Advances in digital-asset infrastructure have lowered barriers to entry, while a series of high-profile political and economic events has underscored the limitations of traditional forecasting tools.

The result is a growing number of platforms where contracts tied to real-world outcomes are traded with increasing liquidity, positioning prediction markets as an emerging, and lightly regulated, complement to conventional financial markets.

Total industry volume jumped roughly fourfold to more than $60 billion in 2025, up from about $15 billion–$16 billion the year before, with platforms like Polymarket driving much of that growth.

On Polymarket specifically, monthly trading exploded from just $54 million at the start of 2024 to over $2.6 billion the following November, helping push cumulative volume past $9 billion in a single year.

XO Vaults

Alongside its core platform, XO is preparing a new product aimed at “democratizing” another key part of the ecosystem: market making.

The forthcoming “XO Vaults” will allow users to pool capital into strategies that provide liquidity across prediction markets, something traditionally dominated by professional firms.

“On platforms like Kalshi or Polymarket, liquidity is controlled by a handful of large market makers,” Habbabeh said. “With XO Vaults, anyone can become a market maker.”

Users will be able to create vaults tied to specific strategies or categories, such as sports or politics, and earn fees by supplying liquidity. Others can invest in those vaults, effectively gaining exposure to market-making returns without actively trading.

“It’s similar to copy trading, but for liquidity provision,” Habbabeh said. “We’re targeting yields of around 8% to 10% annually based on what market makers typically earn.”

The product, expected to debut within weeks, could introduce a new yield primitive in decentralized finance, blending prediction markets with passive income strategies.

“Not everyone wants to bet on outcomes,” Habbabeh said. “Some people just want to earn from the activity around those markets.”

Parlays

The XO team is also developing a feature it says could reshape how parlays work in prediction markets.

“It’s not your typical copy-paste of sportsbook parlays into prediction markets,” said Habbabeh.

The feature, tentatively named “XO Stories,” aims to give users more creative control by linking multiple outcomes beyond traditional parlays. Though details remain limited, the team says pricing will be dynamic, offering a new take on prediction markets.

Built on XO Vaults, the system is meant to support complex, multi-outcome structures without simply aggregating existing trades. Habbabeh shared few details, but suggested it could reshape how users think about and use parlays.

The best content comes from users

Despite increased regulatory scrutiny around prediction markets, particularly in the U.S., Habbabeh said he believes XO’s onchain, permissionless design could offer advantages.

“Everything on XO is transparent and onchain,” he said. “That puts us in a different category compared to more centralized platforms.”

For now, the focus remains on growth and product expansion.

As XO builds out its ecosystem, Habbabeh is confident the user-generated model will continue to differentiate it.

“The internet showed us that the best content doesn’t come from centralized studios, it comes from users,” he said. “We think prediction markets will follow the same path.”

Read more: AI agents are quietly rewriting prediction market trading

‘We Are Still So Early On This Journey’

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‘We Are Still So Early On This Journey’

Morgan Stanley launched its bitcoin exchange-traded product, the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (MSBT), into a market it believes is still in its infancy. 

At a panel on Wednesday moderated by Tyler Evans, Amy Oldenburg, the bank’s head of digital assets, spent the better part of an hour making a case for bitcoin that few clients have heard in full, and said that gap is the industry’s most urgent problem.

“We have to start with bitcoin,” Oldenburg told the audience, citing the asset’s roughly 1.5 trillion dollar market cap and its distance from the rest of the crypto landscape. 

She was careful to draw a line between bitcoin and crypto as a broad category, a distinction she said most retail and institutional clients still do not make with confidence. The firm wants to see that distinction anchored in fundamental research, not just narrative.

Oldenburg: Bitcoin has an education problem 

The education problem, she said, runs deep. Many investors still associate bitcoin with its early history of use by bad actors, and struggle to see past that frame when weighing an allocation. 

Oldenburg said that when clients ask about yield or structured exposure, her team tries to be direct: “you can present it as a yield, but the underlying asset is bitcoin.” That clarity, she said, is still missing from most conversations in the market, and there is “so much more work to do.”

MSBT pulled in more than $100 million in its first week of trading, a strong early signal for a product the bank describes as designed for the full spectrum of its client base rather than a narrow segment. 

But Oldenburg was quick to put that number in context. All of the initial flows came through self-directed accounts, because the fund had not yet been made available on the advisory platform.

She noted that the bank has announced a 2–4% crypto allocation recommendation, and that even with that guidance in place, take-up through advisors has been slow. The product, she reminded the audience, has been on the market for less than a year.

To bridge that gap, Morgan Stanley is working from the inside out. Oldenburg said the firm is rolling out internal training so that financial advisors can speak to clients on bitcoin with confidence, and that her team spends “hour after hour after hour” on the phone walking clients through models and allocation frameworks. 

She said the bank designs products for clients with different needs and wants its platform to cover each of those needs, including clients who want a direct ETP wrapper, and that spot crypto trading is coming for those on the wealth management side.

On custodians, Oldenburg acknowledged the complexity of the decision. The market has no shortage of providers, and choosing among them was not straightforward, which led the firm to work with more than one. Morgan Stanley ultimately tapped Coinbase and BNY Mellon as custodians for MSBT.

When the conversation turned to high-beta bitcoin plays, Oldenburg called Strategy, the Michael Saylor-led company formerly known as MicroStrategy, “a good friend of Morgan Stanley,” and said the bank has worked alongside it through its evolution. 

She said most of the exposure in that vehicle so far is coming from retail and that “digital credit” as a category will take time to develop.

Morgan Stanley buying bitcoin is “not out of the question”

On the question of banks holding bitcoin on their balance sheets, Oldenburg said it is “not out of the question” if regulatory progress continues, but was measured in framing it. 

The U.S. needs greater alignment among its financial regulators, she said, and for a global firm like Morgan Stanley, the picture is more complex still — each jurisdiction comes with its own framework.

She closed where she began: on the need for research with reach. The market has commentators and personalities that investors trust and follow, she said, and the work ahead is to bring that kind of accessible, grounded analysis into the mainstream. 

“We are still so early on this journey,” she said. “So little allocation. It’s still really early.”

Dogecoin zooms 10% in breakaway from bitcoin as open interest hits year-high

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Dogecoin zooms 10% in breakaway from bitcoin as open interest hits year-high

DOGE$0.1062 traders are taking risks, sending the token’s price sharply higher, even as the rally in market leader bitcoin BTC$75,735.40 stalls.

It’s evident in the futures market where open interest in DOGE futures has risen to 15.36 billion tokens, the highest level this year, according to Coinglass. Open interest (OI) refers to the number of active contracts at any given time.

The upswing in open interest suggests more traders are chasing leveraged directional plays, a sign of strong risk sentiment in the market.

DOGE’s price has climbed nearly 10% over the past week, briefly pushing above 11 cents before settling near $0.105 as of writing, according to data source CoinDesk. Bitcoin, meanwhile, has pulled back below $76,000 after trading above $79,000 earlier this week.

The combination of rising spot price and futures OI suggests that new money is entering the market rather than old positions being closed. The pattern is said to reinforce the prevailing market trend, which is bullish, in DOGE’s case. However, it also leaves the market more exposed to sharp liquidations if momentum reverses.

Binance accounted for nearly 3.99 billion DOGE in open interest, followed by Bitget, Bybit, and OKX, each with more than 1 billion DOGE, data shows. Hyperliquid, MEXC, WhiteBIT, and KuCoin also showed sizable positions, pointing to a move not confined to a single venue.

DOGE’s rally comes after weeks of sideways trading and a broader return of speculative interest across majors earlier in the week.

Market observers such as Jordan Jefferson, founder of DogeOS and MyDoge, said in a message to CoinDesk that several catalysts may be contributing to demand for the token.

“DOGE’s price move isn’t tied to a single news event,” Jefferson said. “Over the past week, large holders added more than 500 million DOGE. 21Shares listed a physically backed ETP on Xetra, and Grayscale flows turned positive after nine straight days of outflows. On-chain activity is also up, with active addresses rising 28%.”

Those flows matter because DOGE’s market structure tends to respond quickly when spot accumulation, derivatives leverage, and retail narratives align.

The token has historically traded less like a payments asset and more like an attention-driven macro meme, where positioning can accelerate fast once traders believe a familiar catalyst is back in play.

The X payments angle remains a swing factor, but the least concrete part of the DOGE trade. Elon Musk has said that X Money will launch as a payments product with peer-to-peer transfers, bank deposits, a debit card and cashback rewards through X Payments, a licensed subsidiary partnered with Visa.

Nothing in the announced product indicates support for dogecoin or any crypto functionality. Still, DOGE traders could be reacting to the payments-related developments at Musk-owned companies, possibly in hopes that the token could eventually be folded into X’s financial stack. This hope comes from Musk’s vocal support for dogecoin since at least 2021. At one point, he said the token could make DeFi more accessible to everyone.

For now, traders are treating DOGE as if something bigger is building, and the futures market is where that conviction is showing first.

US Judge Bans Celsius Founder Mashinsky From Any Product Involving ‘Assets’

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US Judge Bans Celsius Founder Mashinsky From Any Product Involving ‘Assets’

The Federal Trade Commission settlement decision also ordered Mashinsky to pay the commission $10 million.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote on April 28 signed off on a $10 million settlement between the Federal Trade Commission and Alex Mashinsky, the founder of collapsed crypto lender Celsius Network, according to court documents.

The settlement permanently bans Mashinsky from promoting or operating any product or service involving the deposit, exchange, investment, or withdrawal of “assets” broadly, which could bar him from financial services beyond crypto.

The stipulated order enters a $4.72 billion monetary judgment against Mashinsky, though his actual cash payment to the FTC is capped at $10 million. That obligation will be considered satisfied if Mashinsky pays an equivalent amount to the Department of Justice under a separate forfeiture order tied to his criminal case, the court filing notes.

The order also permanently enjoins Mashinsky from misrepresenting any product or service he promotes.

The civil settlement follows Mashinsky’s sentencing last May, when a federal judge ordered him to serve 12 years in prison for fraud and market manipulation — specifically for artificially inflating the price of Celsius’s CEL token while secretly selling his own holdings.

Celsius froze customer withdrawals in June 2022, cratering crypto markets and trapping funds belonging to 1.7 million users before the platform filed for bankruptcy the following month, as The Defiant reported. A former partner had already alleged in 2022 that Celsius was operating a Ponzi scheme, with customer funds used to manipulate CEL’s price — accusations that ultimately proved accurate.

The $4.72 billion judgment reflects the full scope of harm to consumers, even if most of it remains uncollectable.

This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.

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