Author: John Smith

Coinbase has filed with the CFTC to activate Trade at Settlement for XRP futures on May 1, placing XRP alongside Bitcoin, Ethereum, gold, and crude oil as an asset institutional traders can execute at the official settlement price. Summary Coinbase will launch Trade at Settlement for XRP futures on May 1, covering both nano XRP and full-sized contracts. TAS lets institutions execute large block orders at the official closing price, eliminating intraday price exposure that makes high-volume execution costly and unpredictable. The launch completes XRP’s institutional execution pathway on Coinbase, following the SEC and CFTC’s joint March 2026 classification of…

BridgeTower Capital has officially deployed Chainlink’s full infrastructure stack to tokenize securities tied to the DOM X Arizona Copper-Gold Project, an $11 billion US natural resource initiative, in what the companies describe as live production infrastructure rather than a pilot. Summary BridgeTower Capital is using Chainlink’s complete stack, including CCIP, Proof of Reserve, NAVLink, and CRE, to tokenize $11 billion in securities from the DOM X Arizona Copper-Gold Project. The deployment is live production infrastructure, not a pilot, making it one of the largest single-asset tokenization builds ever brought to institutional scale. BridgeTower plans to expand the same platform to…

Pi Network has confirmed it is an official sponsor of Consensus 2026 in Miami, with co-founders Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan each presenting at the event on May 7 and May 6 respectively, as the network simultaneously faces a mandatory April 27 deadline for all node operators to upgrade to Protocol 22. Summary Pi Network is an official sponsor of Consensus 2026 in Miami, with both co-founders scheduled to present at the Convergence Stage. Nicolas Kokkalis joins a May 7 panel on proving human identity online without exposing personal data, while Chengdiao Fan speaks May 6 on aligning Web3, AI,…

A coalition of more than 120 crypto organizations led by the Crypto Council for Innovation and the Blockchain Association sent a joint letter to the Senate Banking Committee on April 23 demanding an immediate markup of the CLARITY Act, warning that further delay risks pushing investment, jobs, and technological development offshore while ceding global regulatory standard-setting to other jurisdictions. Summary More than 120 crypto organizations including Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken, Circle, Uniswap Labs, Andreessen Horowitz, and Galaxy Digital sent a joint letter on April 23 demanding an immediate CLARITY Act markup. The letter was addressed to Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott,…

White House Office of Science and Technology Policy director Michael Kratsios circulated a memo on April 23 accusing Chinese entities of conducting deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns to distil and steal US frontier AI systems, using tens of thousands of proxy accounts and jailbreaking techniques, days before a scheduled Trump-Xi summit. Summary The White House OSTP memo accuses Chinese entities principally based in China of running coordinated campaigns to distil US frontier AI systems from OpenAI, Anthropic, and other American labs. The memo says attackers used tens of thousands of proxy accounts to evade detection and jailbreaking techniques to expose proprietary model…

U.S. Treasury and Tether froze $344M in USDT tied to Iran’s IRGC, spotlighting how Tehran’s $7.8B crypto ecosystem leans on stablecoins to dodge sanctions and move oil money. Summary U.S. authorities have frozen $344 million in cryptocurrency linked to Iranian networks, in a move Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed as part of a broader campaign to cut off “all financial lifelines” to the regime. Tether assisted the U.S. government by blacklisting roughly $344 million in USDT across two addresses, whose on‑chain patterns Chainalysis says match Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) wallets and intermediaries tied to Iran’s central bank. Chainalysis estimates…

The Senate voted 46 to 51 on April 22 to defeat a war powers resolution that would have directed the president to withdraw US armed forces from hostilities against Iran without congressional authorization, marking Democrats’ fifth consecutive failure to advance the measure since the conflict began on February 28. Summary The Senate voted 46-51 to defeat a motion to discharge the Iran war powers resolution, failing by five votes to reach the threshold needed to advance. Senator Rand Paul was the only Republican to vote in favor of the resolution, while Senator John Fetterman was the only Democrat to vote…

President Trump announced on April 23 that Israel and Lebanon have agreed to extend their ceasefire by three weeks after a second round of high-level White House talks involving the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, and the US ambassadors to both countries. Summary Trump announced a three-week extension of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire on April 23 after hosting Israeli and Lebanese representatives in the Oval Office for the second time in two weeks. The initial 10-day ceasefire, brokered on April 14, was due to expire on April 27, making the extension the first…

As HSBC, Lloyds, and JPMorgan all commit to tokenized deposits on the Canton Network, Digital Asset Chief Product Officer Bernhard Elsner explains why the instrument is structurally distinct from stablecoins and how Canton’s architecture eliminates bridge risk rather than simply managing it. Summary Tokenized deposits carry the full legal status of a bank deposit, with capital requirements, supervisory oversight, and deposit insurance that stablecoin holders do not receive. HSBC completed a tokenized deposit pilot on Canton, Lloyds issued the first tokenized GBP on a public blockchain using Canton, and JPMorgan is bringing JPM Coin to Canton in a phased 2026…

The House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced two bipartisan bills on April 23 that would give Congress direct oversight authority over US AI chip exports to China and other adversaries, in a direct challenge to the Trump administration’s handling of advanced semiconductor sales. Summary The House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced two bipartisan bills on April 23 targeting AI chip exports to China, including the AI Overwatch Act and the Chip Security Act. The AI Overwatch Act would give Congress 30 days to review and potentially block export licenses for advanced chips to adversarial countries, similar to existing arms sale review authority.…