Western Union CEO Devin McGranahan said the company will focus on expanding adoption and embedding digital assets into its core money movement platform going forward. Financial services giant Western Union is targeting May for the rollout of its new stablecoin as part of a crypto plan that includes its digital asset network and US dollar stable card. “Over the last few months, we've crossed an important threshold. It is no longer a question of if Western Union will be active in digital assets, it is now how fast can we scale,” said Western Union president and CEO Devin McGranahan during the company’s first-quarter earnings call on Friday. “At the foundation of our strategy is USDPT, our US dollar-backed stablecoin. USDPT is now in its final stages of readiness and is expected to go live next month,” he added. Read more
More than $21 million in contributions has been made to the "DeFi United" relief effort so far, with another $215 million to be potentially allocated if certain governance proposals succeed. Aave Labs has proposed that the decentralized autonomous organization behind Arbitrum unfreeze $73.5 million in Ether tied to the Kelp DAO attack and to direct those funds to “DeFi United,” a fund aimed at restoring rsETH and compensating its holders. Last week, the Arbitrum Security Council moved to freeze 30,765 Ether (ETH) held in a wallet connected to the $293 million Kelp exploit. In a proposal posted Saturday on the Arbitrum governance forum, Aave Labs said directing those funds to a planned remediation effort would “restore normal conditions for Arbitrum users” and the wider ecosystem and that the Ether on Arbitrum “represents a material contribution” toward restoring the Kelp DAO restaked ETH (rsETH) token. Read more