Category: Cryptocurrency

A large XRP trader has secured a $224,500 premium by selling options on Deribit, wagering that the cryptocurrency will remain near the $1.40 mark through June 26. The transaction occurred on May 21 as a privately negotiated block order, involving the sale of 1.5 million call and put contracts at identical strike prices. This short strangle strategy effectively provides insurance against significant price swings in either direction. The upfront premium represents the maximum profit, which the trader retains entirely if XRP stays close to $1.40 by expiration.

Historical trading patterns suggest this bet aligns with recent price behavior. Data indicates that XRP has fluctuated between $1.30 and $1.50 for roughly 60% of 2026. Additionally, the May 29 monthly options expiry shows a max pain point at $1.40, reinforcing this level as a key support. Meanwhile, open interest for XRP options has risen above 50 million contracts for the first time in nearly two months, indicating heightened activity ahead of the monthly expiry.

The primary risk to this position stems from the potential passage of the Clarity Act, which could drive XRP sharply past $1.50 if a Senate vote occurs sooner than anticipated. Such a move would render the short call unprofitable. Conversely, a breakdown below the strike price could also lead to losses once the movement exceeds the premium collected. Given the uncertain legislative timeline and broader market pressures, including Bitcoin hovering near $77,000, this trade reflects a conviction that no major catalyst will disrupt XRP’s price stability before late June.

MoonPay has introduced MoonPay Trade, a platform designed to bring banks and fintechs into the world of decentralized finance and tokenized assets. This new offering provides a single interface for accessing over 200 blockchain networks, enabling institutional clients to trade, lend, and manage assets seamlessly.

The platform serves as the execution layer for MoonPay Institutional, which was built after the acquisition of the digital asset security firm Sodot. MoonPay Trade supports tokenized fund subscriptions, collateral transfers, and on-chain lending through protocols such as Aave, Morpho, and Maple Finance. This allows institutions to participate in DeFi without needing to manage complex wallet infrastructure.

Keith Grossman, President of MoonPay, emphasized that the platform integrates execution capabilities for retail payments, making it easier for banks and fintechs to offer crypto services. The move marks a shift from MoonPay’s retail-focused origins to a provider of institutional-grade infrastructure.

The launch comes at a time when only about 10% of real-world asset liquidity is active in DeFi, according to research by Tanaka. Tokenized gold and commodities on-chain are worth around $7 billion, but only $184 million is deployed in DeFi protocols. MoonPay Trade aims to bridge this gap by providing a compliant and performant gateway for institutions.

MoonPay now serves over 30 million customers across 180 countries and works with more than 500 enterprise clients. The company’s MPC wallet technology, acquired through Sodot, secures institutional keys and automates complex workflows. By offering an all-in-one solution, MoonPay competes with other institutional DeFi access platforms like Fireblocks, Circle, Coinbase, and BitGo, positioning itself as a full-stack infrastructure provider for tokenized finance.

In an unprecedented move, Singapore’s central bank has canceled the license of crypto firm Bsquared Technology after discovering repeated false statements. The revocation, effective May 14, 2026, comes just 16 months after the license was granted—marking one of the swiftest crackdowns on a newly authorized digital payment token service provider.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) conducted an on-site inspection in 2025 and unearthed major deficiencies in the company’s risk management systems and conflict of interest protocols. More alarmingly, Bsquared supplied inaccurate information during its license application and throughout the regulator’s review process. This pattern of deceit extended to its dealings with outsourced partners, breaching MAS guidelines on managing third-party services.

The company, which facilitated crypto trading and token transfers, now faces the requirement to submit a closure certificate from independent auditors confirming the proper handling of client assets. The enforcement action has sent shockwaves through Singapore’s crypto community, as only 37 firms have been granted such licenses. The incident is expected to tighten scrutiny on all license holders, particularly regarding their initial disclosures.

Singapore has positioned itself as a global crypto hub since enacting the Payment Services Act in 2020, but this case underscores the regulator’s commitment to enforcing high standards. The MAS is also considering whether senior executives at Bsquared should be held personally accountable for the violations.

Europe’s largest asset manager, Amundi, overseeing €2.4 trillion in assets, has teamed up with Spiko Finance to introduce a new tokenized fund on the Solana blockchain. This UCITS-compliant fund, named SAFO, marks the eighth blockchain integrated into their strategy. Spiko Finance handles tokenization and brokerage, while CACEIS, an Amundi affiliate, manages depositary and fund administration duties.

SAFO is structured as a sub-fund under the SPIKO SICAV legal entity, regulated by France’s AMF. It relies on total return swap contracts fully backed by top-tier banks like BNP Paribas. Investors can subscribe or redeem in euros, US dollars, British pounds, or Swiss francs, with a minimum investment of one unit per currency class.

This launch coincides with US Solana spot ETFs surpassing $1 billion in assets under management, signaling a shift from purely American institutional adoption to a transatlantic trend. Our data shows roughly 30 institutions held about $540 million in Solana ETF exposure by March 2026, a figure now bolstered by European inflows.

Interestingly, Goldman Sachs has decreased its SOL holdings while Amundi expands, creating a dual institutional narrative that could foster long-term demand. Endowments like Dartmouth have also added Solana ETF positions, as regulated products lower barriers for conservative investors.

The UCITS framework allows SAFO to be distributed across all EU member states under a single regulatory umbrella, eliminating cross-border compliance issues that previously hindered European institutional involvement in on-chain assets. As of March 2026, the fund had around $100 million in committed assets across its other seven blockchain deployments.

Solana was selected due to its high transaction throughput and growing institutional infrastructure. Notably, Morgan Stanley has refiled a staked Solana ETF application, suggesting simultaneous pressure from both US and European institutional channels.

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban has liquidated approximately 80% of his Bitcoin stash, abandoning his long-held belief that the cryptocurrency serves as a reliable hedge against economic turmoil and dollar depreciation. In a recent interview with Front Office Sports, Cuban revealed that his confidence in Bitcoin’s store-of-value thesis has eroded after observing gold’s outperformance during geopolitical tensions.

Cuban noted that while gold surged to $5,000 per ounce amid the US-Iran conflict, Bitcoin fell, contradicting his expectation that it would act as a superior alternative to the precious metal. He admitted, ‘I always thought it was a better version of gold than gold. But gold just blew up and went to $5,000. Bitcoin dropped.’ This reversal marks a significant shift for the Shark Tank star, who previously held a portfolio comprising 60% Bitcoin, 30% Ethereum, and 10% other assets.

Despite selling most of his Bitcoin, Cuban retains his Ethereum holdings, citing the utility of smart contracts and decentralized finance applications. He dismissed most other cryptocurrencies as ‘garbage,’ reinforcing his pragmatic approach to digital assets. Cuban’s exit comes after he had repeatedly touted Bitcoin’s scarcity as a key advantage over gold, a stance he now considers outdated.

Critics of Cuban’s move argue that his assessment depends heavily on the chosen timeframe. Since the initial escalation of US-Iran tensions, Bitcoin has actually risen more than 16%, while gold has declined over 15% from its peak. Currently, gold trades around $4,500 per ounce, pulling back from its $5,000 high, while Bitcoin sits near $77,500, down roughly 38% from its October 2025 all-time high of $126,080.

Cuban’s decision does not appear to reflect a broader institutional trend, as spot Bitcoin ETFs collectively hold over $100 billion in assets. His personal evolution from a Bitcoin skeptic to a major holder and now a partial seller underscores the volatile nature of crypto investments and the ongoing debate over Bitcoin’s role as a digital gold.

On May 21, leading cryptocurrency exchange Kraken introduced staking support for the Avalanche network, offering users three distinct earning pathways. The most lucrative option, Bonded Staking, features a promotional annual percentage yield of up to 10% for a limited period before settling to 7% APY. Meanwhile, Auto Earn and Flexible Staking each provide up to 3.5% APY, catering to different risk appetites and liquidity needs.

With this launch, Kraken simplifies the staking process by handling all validator operations, infrastructure maintenance, and reward distribution internally. Users benefit from automatic reinvestment of rewards, which compounds their holdings over time without any manual intervention. This move is particularly significant for retail investors who previously found direct Avalanche staking technically challenging due to validator management requirements.

John Zettler, Kraken’s Director of Earn Products, emphasized that while staking AVAX was always possible, it came with considerable complexity. He stated that the exchange aimed to remove these barriers, allowing clients to participate in protocol staking seamlessly through various earn offerings. Similarly, John Nahas, Chief Business Officer at Ava Labs, highlighted that this integration expands participation in the Avalanche ecosystem by eliminating technical hurdles that historically limited user engagement.

The launch comes at a time when institutional interest in Avalanche is growing. Crypto.news recently covered Bitwise’s BAVA ETP launching on the NYSE with a 5.4% staking yield, as well as Grayscale’s GAVA Avalanche Staking ETF, which went live with zero fees and embedded staking. These developments, combined with Kraken’s new staking service, aim to bolster demand for AVAX tokens, which are currently trading near $9.39—a 58.7% decline over the past year.

Avalanche’s blockchain has been adopted by major entities such as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Apollo, FIFA, and the state of Wyoming for enterprise-grade infrastructure. The average staking return on the network was approximately 7% in 2025, making Kraken’s promotional 10% rate a premium offering that could attract more participants to secure the network while earning rewards.

MAP Protocol’s native token, MAPO, suffered a catastrophic 96% drop after a vulnerability in the Butter Network cross-chain bridge allowed an attacker to mint an astronomically large number of tokens. The exploit, which took place on the Ethereum and BNB Chain networks, resulted in the creation of approximately one quadrillion MAPO tokens—vastly exceeding the legitimate supply of around 208 million.

Blockchain security firm Blockaid reported that the attacker manipulated a Solidity contract flaw to produce these tokens and then quickly dumped about 1 billion of them on Uniswap liquidity pools. This selling pressure caused MAPO’s price to plummet from roughly $0.003 to nearly $0.0001 in a matter of hours. The attacker managed to drain approximately 52 ETH (worth around $180,000) from the pools but still holds close to a trillion MAPO tokens, posing a persistent threat to other liquidity pools and exchange markets.

The root cause of the exploit was traced to a collision in the abi.encodePacked function used to validate cross-chain retry messages. Blockaid explained that the bridge’s verification process lacked proper length prefixes for dynamic-byte fields, allowing the attacker to repackage a legitimate signed message into a forged retry request. The protocol accepted this altered payload, leading to the unauthorized mint. Notably, the project confirmed that the light client, oracle multisig, and MAPO token contract itself were not compromised.

In response, Map Protocol paused its mainnet and initiated a migration process. The team announced plans to release a new contract address and an asset snapshot timeline, while tokens associated with the attacker’s wallets will be excluded from future conversions and invalidated during migration. These measures aim to restore integrity to the token supply.

This incident adds to a growing list of cross-chain bridge exploits within the DeFi sector. Earlier in the week, the Verus Protocol Ethereum bridge lost over $11.5 million in a similar forged-transfer attack. Meanwhile, the TON-TAC bridge successfully recovered about 80% of the $2.68 million stolen in a May 11 exploit, though the bridge remains suspended pending an independent audit.​ The repeated vulnerabilities underscore the persistent risks in interoperability infrastructure, highlighting the need for more robust validation mechanisms.

The landscape for Ethereum scaling solutions is undergoing a significant transformation, as evidenced by the recent decision of Syndicate Labs to cease operations. The company cited a fundamental shift in the rollup market, where demand for infrastructure supporting custom application-specific chains has dwindled. Rather than relying on reusable platforms like Syndicate’s smart sequencer technology, many projects are now opting for in-house consulting teams to develop custom chains.

Syndicate Labs, which had secured $20 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz in 2021, was established to facilitate customizable Ethereum appchains and rollups. However, over the past year, the ecosystem has seen a consolidation of liquidity and users among a few major layer-2 networks, leaving smaller players struggling for relevance. According to L2Beat data, total value locked in rollups has declined roughly 36% from its peak above $50 billion in October, with Arbitrum One, Base, and OP Mainnet now commanding about 75% of the market.

A study by 21Shares published in December revealed that layer-2 activity had plummeted by 61% since June, with many smaller chains operating at minimal usage levels. The asset manager described these as zombie chains due to their slowing transaction activity. This trend has made it increasingly difficult for companies like Syndicate Labs to sustain their business models.

The shutdown announcement follows a difficult period for Syndicate Labs, including a bridge exploit in late April. While the company asserted that the closure decision was independent of the exploit, the incident undoubtedly added pressure. The exploit involved a leaked private key that allowed an attacker to upgrade bridge contracts on two networks and drain approximately 18.5 million SYND tokens, valued at around $330,000, along with roughly $50,000 in user assets. Subsequent reports indicated that the upgrade key was stored in a password manager without extra encryption, and the bridge lacked multisignature approvals or automated circuit breakers for upgrades.

Following the exploit, Syndicate Labs pledged full compensation to affected users and outlined plans to enhance key management practices, introduce hardware or multisignature protections, and improve monitoring around contract upgrades. Nevertheless, the SYND token has continued to suffer. Within hours of the closure announcement, it dropped another 21% to a record low near $0.012, representing a loss of about 99.5% from its peak of $2.61 in September 2025.

The broader crypto sector has seen similar shutdowns this year due to weak activity and funding challenges. Mobile DeFi superapp Legend announced its wind-down in May, citing scaling difficulties, while projects like Step Finance, Polynomial, Balancer Labs, and Seamless Protocol have also curtailed operations. This trend highlights the intense competition and evolving dynamics within the decentralized finance and layer-2 ecosystem.

Italian authorities have cracked a sophisticated tax evasion scheme involving Bitcoin Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens, with blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis confirming that the public ledger left an indelible trail. The Guardia di Finanza in Foggia and Rome traced over €1 million in undeclared gains from a suspect who had used these novel crypto assets to generate and conceal income.

According to Chainalysis, the investigation began as a routine probe into unreported earnings. However, analysts soon discovered that the suspect had exploited Bitcoin Ordinals—which allow data to be inscribed onto individual satoshis—and BRC-20 tokens, a token standard that uses text inscriptions to create and transfer assets without smart contracts. The individual minted, listed, and sold these tokens, funneling profits back into a main Bitcoin wallet while also receiving public subsidies.

Chainalysis emphasized that the technical novelty of cryptocurrencies does not equate to anonymity. Despite the complexity of Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens, every transaction remains permanently recorded on the blockchain. In this case, exchange records combined with on-chain patterns enabled investigators to link wallet activity to a specific individual.

This incident underscores ongoing gaps in crypto tax reporting on a global scale. A 2026 study published in the Review of Accounting Studies found that IRS data captured only 32% to 56% of estimated U.S. crypto owners, based on survey comparisons. Similarly, a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper on Norway revealed widespread noncompliance even among investors using exchanges that share identity data with authorities. The paper suggested that enforcement should be targeted or low-cost, as many crypto investors owe relatively small amounts.

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has projected a gross tax gap of $696 billion for tax year 2022, with underreporting accounting for $539 billion of that figure. Lawmakers are now debating measures to address crypto tax complexities, such as the PARITY Act, which would require the Treasury to study small crypto payment tax relief and issue guidance without creating an immediate exemption. Additionally, Kraken filed 56 million crypto tax forms for 2025, with the majority tied to transactions under $50, prompting the exchange to call for higher reporting thresholds and simplified rules for low-value transactions.

Staking rewards are also under scrutiny, as 18 bipartisan House lawmakers have urged the IRS to revisit its 2023 guidance before 2026, proposing that taxpayers be allowed to defer some staking and mining tax liabilities. Chainalysis reiterated that while crypto users may turn to new asset types to hide gains, public blockchains leave permanent records that investigators can trace, as demonstrated in this Italian case.

In a recent statement, Kate Fraher, the former chief risk officer of Silvergate Bank, has openly disputed the official narrative surrounding the bank’s closure and her settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Fraher asserted that regulators never actually demonstrated that the bank’s anti-money laundering measures were flawed. She explained that she resolved the SEC’s claims to escape a prolonged legal struggle, not because the accusations were valid.

Fraher’s remarks come shortly after the SEC, now under Chair Paul Atkins, eliminated its long-standing policy that prevented settling defendants from publicly denying the agency’s allegations. This policy, in effect since 1972, had drawn criticism for silencing defendants. Fraher described this change as allowing her to finally speak the truth about her case. She stressed that the SEC’s process is designed to exert maximum pressure and has real human consequences, noting that she personally experienced being “de-banked” and had her own credit lines revoked during the investigation.

The SEC had sued Silvergate, Fraher, and former CEO Alan Lane in July 2024, accusing them of misleading investors about the bank’s compliance with anti-money laundering rules, particularly concerning transactions linked to FTX. The SEC claimed Silvergate missed roughly $9 billion in suspicious transfers. Under the settlement, Silvergate paid a $50 million civil penalty, Lane paid $1 million, and Fraher paid $250,000 plus accepted a five-year ban from serving as an officer or director of a public company. Former CFO Antonio Martino is still fighting the charges.

Contrary to the widely held belief that Silvergate’s collapse was triggered by FTX’s downfall in 2022, Fraher maintained that the bank remained operationally sound after restructuring in early 2023. Even after a 70% deposit outflow following FTX’s bankruptcy, she argued that Silvergate kept appropriate capital levels and reduced staff to continue safely. Instead, she attributed the bank’s liquidation to intense pressure from U.S. financial regulators and policymakers, which made its business model unsustainable. This echoes claims from crypto industry figures who referred to the situation as “Operation Chokepoint 2.0,” an alleged campaign to cut off crypto companies from the banking system.

Venture capitalist Nic Carter had previously reported that Silvergate insiders described informal regulatory demands to slash crypto-related deposits to just 15% of total liabilities. Carter argued that the bank’s voluntary liquidation, rather than a forced FDIC receivership, suggested it was pushed toward closure by supervisory pressure, not insolvency. He linked Silvergate’s failure to the subsequent collapses of Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank during the 2023 regional banking crisis, noting that scrutiny on crypto-focused banks intensified after FTX, even without proven criminal wrongdoing related to Silvergate’s ties to FTX.

Fraher praised SEC Chair Atkins and Commissioner Hester Peirce for ending the gag order, which she called unconstitutional. Peirce has also criticized the policy, arguing that it undermines transparency and investor protection. In a recent statement, she emphasized that both regulators and defendants should be free to discuss enforcement cases openly after settlements are reached.