Altex Romania, the country's leading electro-IT retailer, has contracted a loan of EUR43 million from Raiffeisen Bank Romania, with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) participating in the financing.
Houdini Swap launched Houdini Pay, a payment service that breaks onchain links between counterparties, offering surface-level privacy. Centralized instant exchange aggregator Houdini Swap has rolled out a private payment service allowing users to receive payments in their preferred asset without revealing their onchain address. According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph, Houdini Pay allows users to generate shareable payment links with support for over 4,000 digital assets across multiple blockchains. The asset is converted to the receiver’s preferred asset, and routing the payment through the system breaks the onchain link between the sender and the receiver, preventing one from snooping on the other’s wallet. The fees incurred for using the service are those for using the Houdini Swap instant exchange aggregator on the back end and are covered by the sender. The recipient receives the full requested amount. Read more
Orange Romania, leader of the local telecom market, has announced the launch of 5G+ technology in the Bucharest Metro.
Lawyers say privacy laws and AML laws sometimes conflict and there’s no clear path to compliance for decentralized blockchain projects. Crypto was originally most closely associated with anonymity, but in 2025, the crypto ecosystem has changed. User privacy is diminishing, as new laws in different jurisdictions across the globe require Know Your Customer and ID checks for wallets or exchange accounts to combat money laundering. The increasing sophistication of blockchain analysis tools means that every transaction has a transparent trail that can be traced back to its source. As a result, onchain privacy has become a major theme. In October, the Ethereum Foundation announced the formation of its Privacy Cluster, a group of some 47 researchers, engineers and cryptographers who are working to make the base layer of Ethereum private. Read more