ECB Sets Cautious Path for Tokenized Capital Markets in New Bulletin

The European Central Bank (ECB) set out a cautious path toward tokenizing Europe’s capital markets, saying the technology can deliver efficiency gains only if it remains anchored to central bank money, infrastructures remain interoperable, and regulation is “robust and supportive.”  In its latest Macroprudential Bulletin published on Monday, the ECB said distributed ledger technology (DLT)…

ClearBank says it’s first Dutch bank with MiCA approval, rolls out EURC, USDC

ClearBank Europe plans to start offering euro- and U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins after saying it’s the first Dutch credit institution cleared to provide crypto services under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation. The bank, which has more than 270 institutional clients, 1.7 million individual customers and more than $13 billion in assets under…

Nigel Farage-Backed Stack BTC Buys £2M in Bitcoin

Stack BTC, an Aquis-listed Bitcoin treasury company chaired by former UK Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, purchased 2 million British pounds ($2.7 million) worth of Bitcoin on Monday, as Nigel Farage deepens his ties to the firm. According to an April 13 filing, the company purchased 37 Bitcoin (BTC) as part of its treasury strategy at a…

StarkWare Cuts Jobs, Restructures Around Revenue Push

Zero-knowledge scaling company StarkWare is cutting jobs and restructuring its operations as it shifts from infrastructure development toward revenue-generating products.  CEO Eli Ben-Sasson said in internal remarks that the firm will split into two business units and cut headcount to move faster and operate more efficiently, with one unit focused on applications and the other…

South Korea’s Central Bank Pitches Crypto ‘Circuit Breakers’

South Korea’s central bank says crypto exchanges should have their own “circuit breakers” that halt trading to prevent a repeat of the market fallout after Bithumb mistakenly sent more than $40 billion in Bitcoin to its customers in February. The Bank of Korea said in a payments report on Monday that lawmakers should consider introducing…

TRUMP Token Whales Loading Up Before Luncheon Event

Crypto whales loaded up more of the TRUMP memecoin ahead of the luncheon at US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida this month, which offers entry to the largest holders. One whale withdrew about 105,754 OFFICIAL TRUMP (TRUMP) from Binance on Saturday to add to its stash of 1.13 million TRUMP, worth about $3.2…

Musician Loses $420K Bitcoin From Fake Ledger App

Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT said Garrett Dutton’s 5.9 Bitcoin has already been sent to deposit addresses associated with KuCoin. Garrett Dutton, an American musician better known as “G. Love,” said he lost $420,000 worth of Bitcoin after installing a malicious app impersonating the self-custody crypto app Ledger Live from Apple’s App Store and entering his seed…

Strategy signals another bitcoin buy as company needs just 2% annual BTC growth to cover dividends

Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor signaled an imminent bitcoin purchase on Sunday, posting “think bigger” alongside the company’s BTC acquisition tracker that has preceded every major buy since 2020. The company has made 105 bitcoin purchases since it began accumulating in August 2020. Its most recent, on April 6, added 4,871 BTC for $329.8 million. Total…

AI Routers Can Steal Credentials and Crypto

University of California researchers have discovered that some third-party AI large language model (LLM) routers can pose security vulnerabilities that can lead to crypto theft.  A paper measuring malicious intermediary attacks on the LLM supply chain, published on Thursday by the researchers, revealed four attack vectors, including malicious code injection and extraction of credentials.  “26…

ECB Backs Plan for ESMA to Take Over Crypto Supervision

The European Central Bank has supported the European Commission’s plan to bring the supervision of major crypto companies under the EU’s financial markets regulator.  The ECB said in an opinion published on Friday that it fully supports bringing oversight of systemically important cross-border capital market companies, such as large trading platforms and crypto companies, under…