Sam Bankman-Fried seeks a new FTX trial, alleging DOJ witness pressure and citing a declaration disputing the prosecution’s insolvency claims, according to a new filing. Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried claims to have “new evidence“ that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) under former President Joe Biden silenced key witnesses in his fraud case, as he pushes for a new trial. “New evidence shows that Biden’s DOJ threatened multiple witnesses into silence or into changing their testimony. My conviction should be thrown out,“ said SBF in his latest X post from prison on Wednesday. He linked to a court filing seeking a new trial under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 33. The motion, submitted Thursday, references a declaration from a former FTX employee and follows earlier reporting that SBF is attempting to challenge his fraud conviction through previously unavailable witness testimony. Read more
The product will let institutions use custodied Bitcoin as onchain collateral without moving assets or transferring control, with Morpho set as the initial liquidity partner. Lombard said it plans to launch Bitcoin Smart Accounts, designed to allow Bitcoin held in institutional custody to be used as onchain collateral without moving the asset or transferring control to a third party. According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph, following a launch this quarter, custodied Bitcoin will be recognized onchain through a receipt token, BTC.b, enabling institutions to access lending and liquidity venues while retaining legal ownership and existing custody arrangements. Lombard said the framework targets asset managers, corporate treasuries and other institutional holders whose Bitcoin (BTC) remains idle in qualified custody. Pilots are underway with select institutional clients, though Lombard has not disclosed customer names or transaction volumes. Read more
High TPS figures promise scale, but every additional transaction increases the burden on the very nodes meant to keep networks decentralized. Blockchain transactions per second (TPS) numbers are often treated as a performance gauge, but they don’t tell the full story of whether a network can scale in practice. Carter Feldman, founder of Psy Protocol and a former hacker, told Cointelegraph that TPS figures are often misleading because they ignore how transactions are actually verified and relayed across decentralized systems. “Many pre-mainnet, testnet or isolated benchmarking tests measure TPS with only one node running. At that point, you might as well call Instagram a blockchain that can hit 1 billion TPS because it has one central authority validating every API call,” Feldman said. Read more
XRP looked increasingly bearish at $1.40, with a key indicator suggesting that a downward move below $1 was possible in the coming weeks. XRP (XRP) has retraced nearly 63% from its multi-year high of $3.66 to trade at $1.36 on Wednesday, a technical setup that may have bearish implications for its price, according to a market analyst. Key takeaways: XRP appeared bearish below $1.40, with chart technicals pointing to a further drop toward $0.70-$1. Read more