Author: John Smith

Sanctioned crypto exchange Grinex halted trading after a suspected state-level cyberattack drained up to $15 million in crypto. Summary Grinex suspended trading after a suspected state-linked attack drained about $13.7 million from 54 wallets. On-chain data shows roughly $15 million in USDT moving through Tron and Ethereum, with funds converted to avoid freezing. Grinex said Thursday it had suspended operations after losing more than 1 billion Russian rubles, roughly $13.7 million, from 54 wallets in what it described as a highly sophisticated breach. The Kyrgyzstan-registered exchange pointed to signs that the attackers had access to resources typically associated with foreign…

The UK’s FCA has opened a fresh consultation on how stablecoins, trading, custody and staking will be regulated before a full crypto regime goes live in 2027. Summary The UK Financial Conduct Authority has launched a fresh consultation on how stablecoin issuance, trading platforms, custody and staking will be brought inside regulation. Industry feedback is open until June 3, 2026, with crypto firms able to apply for full FCA authorization from September 30, 2026, before the new regime starts in October 2027. The FCA says its crypto rulebook is “substantively complete” and aims to create a “competitive and sustainable” market,…

Anthropic Trust has appointed Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis, to Anthropic’s board of directors, making him the first pharmaceutical industry executive to join the AI lab’s governing body and tipping Trust-appointed directors to a board majority for the first time. Summary Narasimhan was appointed on April 14 by the Anthropic Long-Term Benefit Trust, the independent body whose members hold no equity in Anthropic and exist solely to elect board directors aligned with the company’s public benefit mission. With his appointment, Trust-selected directors now hold a majority of seats on the seven-person board, a governance threshold written into Anthropic’s founding documents…

RFK Jr. HHS budget cuts of roughly $16 billion faced their first major congressional test Thursday as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before the House Ways and Means Committee, fielding pointed questions on vaccine policy while defending a budget that slashes discretionary spending by 12.5% compared to last year. Summary Trump’s 2027 budget proposes cutting HHS discretionary spending by approximately $16 billion, including $5 billion from the National Institutes of Health, as Kennedy opens a weeklong gauntlet of seven committee and subcommittee hearings. Kennedy deflected vaccine questions and said he was “not happy” with proposed cuts to WIC…

The House voted to reject a resolution Thursday directing President Trump to remove US armed forces from hostilities against Iran, 213 to 214, falling one vote short along almost entirely party lines. Summary Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York proposed the resolution directing the president to end military action in Iran unless explicitly authorized by Congress; it failed 213–214 on Thursday, one day after the Senate voted 52–47 to reject a similar measure. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky was the lone Republican to support the measure; Rep. Jared Golden of Maine was the sole Democrat to vote against it; Rep.…

Voters in New Jersey’s 11th congressional district are heading to the polls today in a special election that could tighten the Republican House majority to its absolute limit, pitting progressive Democrat Analilia Mejia against Republican Joe Hathaway in a district that Democrats carried by 9 points in 2024. Summary The NJ special election fills the seat vacated by Governor Mikie Sherrill, who resigned from Congress in November 2025 after winning the governorship; Democrats hold a 65,000-voter registration advantage in the district. A Mejia win would leave House Speaker Mike Johnson able to lose just two GOP votes on party-line legislation,…

NVIDIA Ising has launched as the world’s first family of open-source quantum AI models, targeting the two biggest engineering bottlenecks in quantum computing: processor calibration and error correction decoding. Summary NVIDIA Ising delivers up to 2.5x faster and 3x more accurate quantum error correction decoding than current open-source benchmarks, with calibration workflows shrinking from days to hours. The model family includes Ising Calibration, a 35-billion-parameter vision-language model, and Ising Decoding, a 3D convolutional neural network framework, both available on GitHub and Hugging Face. Early adopters include Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Harvard, IQM Quantum Computers, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the…

The SEC CLARITY Act roundtable convened in Washington today, April 16, bringing regulators and industry together for a public discussion on digital asset market structure as the Senate Banking Committee targets a late-April markup of the most consequential crypto bill the US has ever seen. Summary The SEC is hosting a roundtable on digital asset market structure today, not a vote or markup, but a signal of where regulators stand before Congress acts on the CLARITY Act. The Senate Banking Committee is targeting a late-April markup, with Chair Tim Scott yet to set a firm date as of April 15,…

A new Cato Institute paper argues that U.S. capital gains rules make “bitcoin taxes make no sense,” burying everyday BTC payments in paperwork and locking the asset into a hoarding role instead of money. Summary Cato Institute’s Nick Anthony argues US capital gains rules make daily bitcoin spending “make no sense.” Treating BTC as property forces users to track tax lots on small purchases, from coffee to groceries. Cato urges scrapping gains on crypto payments or adopting a higher de minimis threshold than the current $200 proposal. The Cato Institute is calling for a reset of how the United States…

Coinglass flags $1.64b in BTC longs at risk below $70,721 and $1.25b in shorts above $78,068 as Bitcoin grinds in a tightly leveraged $70k–$78k range. Summary Coinglass data shows $1.64b in BTC longs at risk if price dips below $70,721. Another $1.25b in BTC shorts could be wiped out if Bitcoin breaks above $78,068. Traders face a narrow band between major liquidation pockets as BTC hovers in the mid-$70,000s. According to Coinglass, if Bitcoin (BTC) falls below $70,721, the cumulative long liquidation intensity on major centralized exchanges (CEXs) climbs to roughly $1.644 billion. Conversely, if BTC breaks above $78,068, the…