DeFi News Hub

Crypto companies are upgrading wallets to counter the coming quantum computing threat, but gaps remain.

Researchers say multiplayer games may reveal AI behavior that static tests miss.

Two men face money laundering and drug charges following the seizure of $4.2 million in Bitcoin from alleged darknet marketplace dealings.

U.K. police charged British sprinter CJ Ujah in an alleged crypto fraud scheme involving wallet seed phrase theft and impersonation calls.

LayerZero on Friday issued a public apology for its handling of the April 18 exploit that drained roughly $292 million from Kelp DAO's rsETH bridge, conceding it should not have allowed its own validator to operate as the sole verifier securing high-value transactions. In a blog post which begins... Read the full story at The Defiant

Senators had hoped the issue, which has plagued crypto legislation for months, had been put to bed with a proposed compromise last week.

Publicly traded Bitcoin miner and data center operator TeraWulf reported a hefty net loss in Q1 as its AI revenue took over from BTC.

A preliminary Apple-Intel manufacturing agreement—backed by a White House push—sent Intel stock above $130 on Friday.

The MegaETH Foundation completed its first MEGA buyback on May 7, deploying all net rewards accrued from the network's USDm stablecoin issuer through the end of April. The circulating supply of USDm, the MegaETH-native stablecoin built in partnership with Ethena, currently stands at $480 million,... Read the full story at The Defiant

The Senate Democrat said Meta’s reported plans to partner with a third-party stablecoin issuer could undermine “competition, privacy… and financial stability.”

Users of Myriad's prediction market believe it's likely Strategy will part ways with some of its Bitcoin holdings this year.

The new website follows years of hearings, investigations, and pressure for greater UAP transparency.

Crypto exchange Kraken is seeking a U.S. federal banking charter to complement its Wyoming SPDI subsidiary.

After months of trading sideways while its underlying business scaled, the native token of real-world asset (RWA) tokenization platform Ondo Finance is finally catching up. ONDO is trading at $0.45, up 29% over the past 24 hours and around 68% on the week, according to CoinGecko. The token's market... Read the full story at The Defiant

Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, has filed an application with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a national trust company charter, according to a press release from the firm today, May 8. If approved, the entity — Payward National Trust Company... Read the full story at The Defiant

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde spoke out against the development of EUR-pegged stablecoins in a speech earlier today, May 8, at the inaugural Banco de España LatAm Forum in Spain. Lagarde argues that stablecoins perform two distinct functions: a monetary one, extending a... Read the full story at The Defiant

Nvidia gains rights to invest up to $2.1 billion in IREN as companies race to lock down massive AI compute capacity.

Crypto markets were mostly unchanged on Friday as Bitcoin hovered around the $80,000 level and spot ETF flows turned negative for the first time this month. BTC is trading at $79,938, down 0.3% on the day but still up 2.1% over the past week, according to CoinGecko. Ether slipped 0.8% to $2,281,... Read the full story at The Defiant

The European Central Bank chief says Europe "knows which port it is sailing to,” and it's not towards a euro stablecoin.

Coinbase says Amazon Web Services failures across multiple availability zones caused an extended outage on its platform.

a16z partner David George argues AI will reshape work instead of erasing it.

Bitcoin briefly plummeted to about 2 cents on Revolut due to what the financial platform described as a third-party service disruption.

New XRP addresses hit multi-year lows, per Glassnode data, as the network shifts from "retail speculation" to institutional usage.

The privacy-focused cryptocurrency plans to launch a quantum-recoverable wallet within a month as it outlines its roadmap.

Coinbase missed earnings, but one of its newest businesses is scaling incredibly fast—and Tom Lee may finally be slowing his Ethereum buying.

Arbitrum DAO voted to release the Kelp exploit funds, but a U.S. Court restraining notice has put the approved transfer in legal jeopardy.

The campaigns target over-the-counter operators and local exchanges as new laws expand oversight to custody and brokerage services.

Solv Protocol will move its tokenized Bitcoin infrastructure to Chainlink, following Kelp DAO's lead after it blamed LayerZero for a hack.

World Liberty co-founder Zach Witkoff also said Thursday that the crypto firm is “in the final stages” of receiving bank charter approval from the Trump administration.

Crypto exchange Coinbase reported a consecutive quarterly loss as transaction revenue plummeted 40% amid a volatile market.

Leading Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies may start slowing its ETH purchases as it approaches its 5% supply goal.

Chrome is quietly installing a 4GB AI on your devices. And now, its latest version has removed the disclosure that promised to keep your data off Google’s servers.

The IMF called for treating cybersecurity as a core stability issue as new AI tools let even unskilled attackers breach critical infrastructure.

Tydro, the largest lending protocol on Kraken's Ink Layer 2, will keep its markets paused until a migration to Chainlink price feeds is complete, the protocol said on Thursday. The protocol was notified by Chaos Labs on May 4 of an attack on the oracle provider that displayed "patterns similar to... Read the full story at The Defiant

A new study finds ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Perplexity all share user data with third-party ad trackers—sometimes even when you say no to cookies.

The Nasdaq-listed fund offers exposure to Canton Coin, native token of the privacy-focused institutional blockchain network.

Bitcoin briefly fell below $80,000 on Thursday as analysts say profit taking has increased among crypto traders.

Amazon Web Services on Thursday introduced Bedrock AgentCore Payments, a managed feature set that lets AI agents authenticate wallets, hold funds, and complete transactions inside their execution loop, with Coinbase and Stripe supplying the payment rails. The preview puts stablecoins at the center... Read the full story at The Defiant

Shares in Eric Trump's mining firm American Bitcoin have fallen more than 9% after reporting a quarterly loss of nearly $82 million.

The exploit of Polkadot's bridge protocol Hyperbridge last month is a symbol of deeper dysfunction within one of crypto's most ambitious ecosystems, a former insider says. Jaskirat Singh, co-founder and former CEO of Polkassembly, which served as the primary governance interface for Polkadot and... Read the full story at The Defiant

The new Amazon Web Services system lets AI agents use the USDC stablecoin to pay for APIs, data, and online services.

QVAC MedPsy squeezes clinical AI onto a smartphone, beating Google's MedGemma-27B on real-world scenarios while using three times fewer compute resources.

Prediction market platform Kalshi has officially confirmed it raised $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation, with co-founder and CEO Tarek Mansour announcing the news on X today, May 7. The round was led by Coatue, with participation from Morgan Stanley, Sequoia, and a16z, among others. The... Read the full story at The Defiant

Bitcoin and Ethereum traded lower on Thursday as Consensus Miami 2026 entered its final session, with the broader crypto market giving back some of this week's gains even as US equities pushed to fresh record highs. BTC is changing hands at $80,268, down 1.5% over the past 24 hours but still up... Read the full story at The Defiant

Kalshi has another billion dollars to play with as the U.S. prediction market leader continues to grow at a rapid pace.

Google's new Multi-Token Prediction drafters can make Gemma 4 run up to 3x faster on your own hardware—no cloud required, and no quality lost.

A Unitree Robotics humanoid joins the Jogye Order, South Korea's largest Buddhist sect.

Payward Inc., the parent company of U.S. crypto exchange Kraken, has agreed to acquire Reap Technologies — a stablecoin-native card issuing and payments infrastructure company — for up to $600 million in cash and stock. The deal, which values Payward at $20 billion, is expected to close in the... Read the full story at The Defiant

The deal marks Kraken's largest acquisition as it pushes into Asian cross-border payments through stablecoin infrastructure.

Bitwise Asset Management will take over investment management of the Superstate Crypto Carry Fund (USCC), a tokenized cash-and-carry strategy with roughly $267 million in assets, the two firms announced today. The fund will be renamed the Bitwise Crypto Carry Fund, with the transition expected to... Read the full story at The Defiant

Spot Bitcoin ETFs hit $108.76 billion in net assets as five weeks of inflows and fading put skew signal institutional demand is back.

Liquidity provider TrustedVolumes, a market maker and resolver used by 1inch Fusion and other protocols, confirmed on Thursday that it had been drained for roughly $6.7 million in an exploit on the Ethereum network. Web3 security firm Blockaid first flagged the attack, putting initial losses at... Read the full story at The Defiant

A live Snapshot vote on Gnosis DAO is asking GNO holders to authorize an opt-in redemption mechanism that would allow any holder to surrender tokens for their pro-rata share of the DAO treasury, reigniting one of crypto's longest-running debates over whether token holders or operating companies... Read the full story at The Defiant

Kraken on Wednesday launched CFTC-regulated spot margin trading for U.S. retail clients on Kraken Pro, giving customers up to 10x leverage on long and short crypto positions with no accredited investor requirement. Traders can post existing crypto holdings as collateral, view real-time risk metrics... Read the full story at The Defiant

Crypto markets rallied for a third day as Middle East de-escalation and accelerating ETF inflows pushed Bitcoin to its highest level in three months. Bitcoin is changing hands at $81,696, up 6.4% for the week, while the total crypto market capitalization is 0.6% higher at $2.79 trillion, according... Read the full story at The Defiant

Zcash (ZEC) rallied over 30% to become today’s top gainer after crypto-focused venture capital firm Multicoin revealed that it’s been accumulating the privacy coin for the past three months. The VC firm’s co-founder and managing partner Tushar Jain wrote in an X post on May 5 that the firm has... Read the full story at The Defiant

Morgan Stanley has begun rolling out cryptocurrency trading on its E*Trade platform, expanding crypto access to its retail investor base, Bloomberg reported today, May 6. The $2 trillion asset manager's move integrates digital asset trading directly into E*Trade's existing infrastructure, allowing... Read the full story at The Defiant

Coinbase has designated Centrifuge as a Preferred Tokenization Infrastructure platform and made a strategic investment in the firm, the companies announced on Tuesday, deepening a partnership focused on bringing compliant institutional assets onchain through Coinbase's Base network. The deal... Read the full story at The Defiant

Kelp DAO on Tuesday published a detailed rebuttal to LayerZero's account of the April 18 rsETH bridge exploit, confirming that it will migrate rsETH from the LayerZero OFT standard to Chainlink's Cross-Chain Token (CCT) standard and accusing the cross-chain messaging firm of "blaming users for an... Read the full story at The Defiant

Circle and Lighter have entered a strategic partnership that designates USDC as the default and preferred stablecoin across the decentralized perpetuals exchange's full product stack. The integration covers spot and perpetual trading, settlement, liquidations, and onboarding flows, Circle said in a... Read the full story at The Defiant

CME Group plans to launch Bitcoin Volatility futures on June 1, further expanding its lineup of crypto risk management products for institutional clients. The contracts will settle to the CME CF Bitcoin Volatility Index (BVX), a 30-day forward-looking gauge of implied volatility derived from... Read the full story at The Defiant

Bitcoin punched above $81,000 on Tuesday for the first time since January, capping a 7% weekly gain that has lifted total crypto market capitalization to $2.77 trillion, up 0.8% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. BTC last traded at $81,303, with Ether holding around $2,362 and major... Read the full story at The Defiant

Andreessen Horowitz's crypto arm has closed its fifth dedicated fund at $2.2 billion, signaling renewed institutional confidence in crypto infrastructure even as overall sector fundraising contracts sharply. Crypto Fund 5 from a16z crypto targets startups “turning new infrastructure into products... Read the full story at The Defiant

Toncoin (TON) rallied roughly 33% to an intraday high of $1.90 after Telegram founder Pavel Durov said the messaging app will replace the TON Foundation as the driving force behind The Open Network and become its largest validator. The token last changed hands at $1.80, up about 26% on the day,... Read the full story at The Defiant

The Arbitrum DAO announced results today for its March 2026 Security Council election, naming six new members to the 12-person body. The newly elected members are Michael Lewellen, the head of solutions engineering at Turnkey, DZack23, ArbitrumDAO delegate and former senior blockchain engineer at... Read the full story at The Defiant

Securitize has teamed up with Jump and Jupiter Exchange to launch fully onchain, regulated trading for tokenized equities on Solana. The integration combines Securitize's regulatory infrastructure with Jump's market-making liquidity and Jupiter's distribution across the Solana DeFi ecosystem,... Read the full story at The Defiant

Drift Protocol on Tuesday published its user recovery plan for the April 1 exploit, laying out a token-based framework backed by exchange revenue, a Tether-led capital commitment, and partner contributions, with the Solana perpetuals exchange targeting a Q2 2026 relaunch. The blueprint follows the... Read the full story at The Defiant

Figure Technology Solutions (Nasdaq: FIGR) today announced the launch of YLDS on the Stellar network, marking the first time a regulated, yield-bearing dollar product has been made available on the chain, according to a press release shared with The Defiant. YLDS is the blockchain-native fintech’s... Read the full story at The Defiant

Coinbase is reducing its workforce by approximately 14% and fundamentally restructuring operations to become AI-native, CEO Brian Armstrong announced Tuesday. The layoffs come as the crypto exchange navigates market cyclicality and leverages AI productivity gains that have enabled engineers to ship... Read the full story at The Defiant

Polygon Labs launched private stablecoin payments inside its consumer wallet on Monday, adding a shielded transfer option built in collaboration with privacy protocol Hinkal. The feature, available now for USDC and USDT, lets users send stablecoins on Polygon without publishing the sender,... Read the full story at The Defiant

Crypto markets opened the week firmly in the green, with Bitcoin reclaiming $80,000, Ether pushing toward $2,400, and altcoin breadth widening as multiple policy and geopolitical catalysts converged over the weekend. Bitcoin is trading at $80,292, up 1.9% on the day and 4.8% on the week, capping a... Read the full story at The Defiant

Ethereum core contributors gathered above the Arctic Circle in Longyearbyen, Svalbard last week for the Soldøgn Interop, where they aligned on a post-Glamsterdam gas limit floor of 200M, according to a recap published Saturday by Ethereum Foundation protocol support lead Tim Beiko. That target... Read the full story at The Defiant

The Trump family-linked crypto company World Liberty Financial has filed a defamation lawsuit against TRON founder Justin Sun, escalating a feud that has been simmering for months. The firm announced the move in an X thread today, May 4. According to World Liberty Financial, Sun “engaged in... Read the full story at The Defiant

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) on Monday laid out a concrete timeline for its long-awaited tokenization service, saying it plans to facilitate initial trades of tokenized real-world assets in July before a broader launch in October. The company said the service, being built by... Read the full story at The Defiant

Aave LLC, a software development company contributing to the Aave Protocol, filed an emergency motion in the Southern District of New York on Monday seeking to vacate a restraining notice served on Arbitrum DAO last week that locks up roughly $71 million in recovered ETH tied to the April 18 Kelp... Read the full story at The Defiant

A lawyer representing multiple past victims of North Korean state-sponsored hackers is attempting to claim the Kelp exploit-linked ETH that Arbitrum froze last month. U.S.-based attorney Charles Gerstein of Gerstein Harrow LLP posted directly to the Arbitrum governance forum on May 1, serving the... Read the full story at The Defiant

Securitize has received approval from FINRA's Continuing Membership Application (CMA) to expand its broker-dealer activities, becoming the first broker-dealer approved to custody tokenized securities. The approval grants Securitize the ability to provide a complete infrastructure stack for... Read the full story at The Defiant

Western Union launched its USDPT stablecoin on the Solana blockchain, according to a press release on May 4. The stablecoin represents Western Union's direct integration with blockchain infrastructure, enabling the remittance and money services company to offer on-chain dollar-denominated digital... Read the full story at The Defiant

Aave’s deposits on MegaETH crossed $575 million on Friday as capital continued flowing into the Ethereum Layer 2 network a day after its long-awaited MEGA token launch. The figure represents a sharp jump from the roughly $355 million in total DeFi deposits MegaETH hosted at the time of the TGE on... Read the full story at The Defiant

Hyperliquid-based perpetuals platform TradeXYZ on Friday launched Pre-IPO Perpetuals (IPOP), a new contract type designed to enable continuous price discovery for companies in the weeks leading up to a public listing. According to the platform's documentation, IPOP markets are cash-settled... Read the full story at The Defiant

Bitcoin pushed back above $78,000 on Friday, clawing back some of late April's losses in the first trading session of May as crypto markets steadied after a three-day streak of institutional outflows. BTC is changing hands near $78,225, up 2.8% over 24 hours, per CoinGecko. Ether is trading at... Read the full story at The Defiant

DeFi protocols and crypto infrastructure suffered 28 separate exploits totaling $635.2 million in April, the highest monthly incident count ever recorded by DefiLlama and roughly four times the $167 million stolen across the entire first quarter. The incident count nearly doubled the previous... Read the full story at The Defiant

Crypto markets staged a modest intraday recovery on Thursday as traders digested a Big Tech earnings night that delivered roughly $650 billion in combined 2026 AI capex commitments and the most contested FOMC vote since 1992. Bitcoin is changing hands at $76,420, up 1.2% on the day but still down... Read the full story at The Defiant

Ethereum Layer 2 network and ‘real-time’ blockchain MegaETH's long-awaited MEGA token began trading on Thursday, with simultaneous spot listings across 13 major centralized exchanges and on-chain access via the network's decentralized exchanges. MEGA briefly traded above $0.22 in early price... Read the full story at The Defiant

Anchorage Digital has partnered with stablecoin infrastructure provider M0 to offer a combined issuance stack aimed at companies looking to launch U.S.-regulated stablecoins, according to an announcement today, April 30. Under the deal, M0 handles the modular infrastructure layer — stablecoin... Read the full story at The Defiant

Polymarket has selected Chainalysis to deploy what it describes as a "first-of-its-kind" on-chain market integrity solution to monitor trading activity and enforce platform rules, the companies said in a press release on Thursday. At the center of the deal is a detection model built on Chainalysis... Read the full story at The Defiant

Coinbase Asset Management, the licensed investment manager and wholly owned subsidiary of Coinbase, has selected Superstate FundOS to issue an on-chain share class of its Coinbase Stablecoin Yield Fund (CUSHY), a stablecoin credit offering expected to launch in Q2 2026. Per a press release today,... Read the full story at The Defiant

PayPal Holdings is restructuring around three operating divisions, and crypto is getting its own pillar. The payments giant on Wednesday said it would reorganize into Checkout Solutions & PayPal, Consumer Financial Services & Venmo, and Payment Services & Crypto, according to a press release. The... Read the full story at The Defiant

Circle on Wednesday rolled out Nanopayments on mainnet, offering a gas-free USDC payment rail designed to power AI agents, APIs, and machine-driven commerce. According to a blog post from the stablecoin issuer, the product enables USDC transfers as small as $0.000001 with instant verification,... Read the full story at The Defiant

On-chain perpetual futures protocol Wasabi has been hacked with attackers draining over $5 million across Ethereum, Base, Berachain, and Blast, blockchain security firm PeckShield reported on X from their alerts account earlier today, April 30. Wasabi acknowledged the incident on X, urging users to... Read the full story at The Defiant

Kraken announced the launch of Crypto + xStocks bundles on Thursday, April 30, enabling users to build diversified multi-asset portfolios combining digital assets with tokenized representations of traditional U.S. equities and ETFs in a single portfolio. The new product has geo restrictions and, as... Read the full story at The Defiant

Maple Finance announced Thursday that SYRUP, its native token, is now available on Revolut across the UK and EU. The listing brings on-chain institutional credit yield to one of the world's largest fintechs, which operates in 39 countries with over 70 million users. The integration allows retail... Read the full story at The Defiant

Bitcoin is trading at $75,282 as of Wednesday afternoon, down 1.2% over 24 hours and 4.4% on the week, as crypto markets extended losses following the Federal Reserve's decision to leave interest rates unchanged. Ether fell harder, changing hands at $2,225 after a 2.8% daily drop and 7.3% weekly... Read the full story at The Defiant

Meta has begun rolling out stablecoin payouts for creators, marking the social media giant's return to digital currencies four years after shelving its Libra project. According to a Meta help page, creators in Colombia and the Philippines can now opt to receive payouts in USDC on either the Solana... Read the full story at The Defiant

Polymarket processed $25.7 billion in trading volume in March, with retail traders driving consistent, repeated activity across an expanding set of real-world markets, according to a new joint report from Bitget Wallet and Polymarket. The study, based on 1.29 million wallets active in Q1 2026,... Read the full story at The Defiant

MoonPay on Wednesday said it has acquired Israeli key management infrastructure firm Sodot and launched MoonPay Institutional, a new business targeting financial institutions, asset managers, trading firms, and exchanges moving into digital assets. The unit will be led by Caroline D. Pham, the... Read the full story at The Defiant

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... Read the full story at The Defiant

Stable Sea on Wednesday announced a strategic partnership with WisdomTree to embed access to the asset manager's tokenized funds inside its business treasury platform, opening a new distribution channel for onchain dollar yield beyond crypto-native users. The integration begins with the WisdomTree... Read the full story at The Defiant

Tokenization platform Securitize and Computershare, one of the world's largest transfer agents, announced an agreement on Wednesday to enable U.S.-listed issuers to bring their equity onchain through a new construct called Issuer-Sponsored Tokens (ISTs). Under the deal, participating issuers can... Read the full story at The Defiant

Solana memecoin launchpad pumpfun announced Monday evening on X that it has burned approximately $370 million worth of previously bought-back PUMP tokens — roughly 36% of the circulating supply — and is pivoting to a programmatic buyback-and-burn policy funded by 50% of all future revenue for one... Read the full story at The Defiant