Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is now free to travel after French authorities fully lifted the ban on his travel, although the investigation into the platform remains open. French authorities have reportedly lifted Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s travel ban amid an ongoing investigation into the messaging platform. Durov had been ordered to remain in France following his arrest in Paris in August last year, facing multiple charges related to his operation of Telegram. Durov was previously granted temporary exemptions, and French authorities have now fully lifted restrictions on his travel, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. Read more
Distributed cloud projects aim to reduce blockchain’s heavy dependence on centralized providers like AWS. Periodic service disruptions and capacity strain on centralized cloud infrastructure have created an opening for companies building distributed networks. Supporters of the distributed approach argue that spreading workloads across several smaller nodes reduces concentration risk. They say the model could be especially valuable in sectors with high computing demand and low tolerance for downtime, such as AI, gaming and finance. “Over time, as decentralized infrastructure matches or exceeds the performance of centralized clouds, reliance on single providers will naturally decline,” Carlos Lei, CEO and co-founder of DePIN-based connectivity marketplace Uplink, told Cointelegraph. Read more
Circle is seeking to improve FX market infrastructure by offering institutions deeper global liquidity access with fewer intermediaries and reduced counterparty risk. Circle is expanding into the foreign-exchange market, positioning stablecoins as a tool to modernize one of traditional finance’s most entrenched systems. The issuer of USDC (USDC) on Thursday unveiled Circle StableFX, an institutional onchain FX platform built on Arc1, the company’s forthcoming layer-1 blockchain, according to a news release shared with Cointelegraph. Circle also introduced Circle Partner Stablecoins, a program designed to support regulated regional stablecoins. Trading in the global FX market reached $9.6 trillion per day in April, up 28% from 2022, according to data from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS). The daily trading volume in the global FX market is more than double all global stock markets combined, and far exceeds the roughly $1.69 trillion in average daily US equities trading, running 24 hours a day, five ...
The crypto exchange enabled decentralized trading for US users, integrating DEX access and self-custody wallets as onchain volumes reach record highs. Cryptocurrency exchange OKX, traditionally known for its centralized trading services, is expanding into decentralized finance with a new feature that lets US users trade tokens directly on decentralized markets. The DEX trading option, available through the OKX app, allows users to buy and sell tokens while retaining control of their digital assets. Trades are executed via self-custody wallets, meaning users hold their own private keys rather than storing funds on the exchange. According to OKX, the feature provides access to millions of tokens across Solana, Base and X Layer, which is OKX’s own Ethereum layer-2 network built using Polygon’s Chain Development Kit (CDK). Read more
The crypto industry has taken a sharp turn back towards privacy — and it can now exist side by side with regulatory compliance. After years touting the amazing transparency of blockchains, the crypto community has started to realize that privacy is actually essential for many traders, businesses and individuals. Until now, balancing the right to privacy with the need to avoid jail time on money laundering charges has proven a difficult task, as the developers of Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet have discovered. But 2026 is the year that pragmatic privacy is poised to take off, with a slew of new projects tackling compliant forms of privacy for institutions and surging interest in existing privacy coins like Zcash cheered on by Solana influencer Mert Mumtaz. Read more
Bitcoin whales doubled down on their BTC purchases, but long-term holder selling and resistance above $106,000 curtailed a potential recovery to $110,000. Bitcoin (BTC) rebounded 8.7% to $107,500 on Tuesday, following its four-month low of $98,900, as whales took advantage of discounted prices to add to their holdings. The price corrected to below $103,000 on Thursday, as $106,000 proved a tough barrier to break. Key takeaways: Bitcoin whales recorded their second-largest weekly accumulation of 2025. Read more
Institutions must stake ETH on decentralized networks using Distributed Validator Technology to secure Ethereum and maximize returns. Opinion by: Alon Muroch, founder of SSV Labs A green light for institutional staking alone will not signal a long-term future for Ethereum. As institutions enter the Web3 ecosystem, they need to recognize that ETH isn’t an asset that can be fit into existing TradFi molds; it’s the World Computer. Unless institutions can embrace Ethereum’s philosophy of decentralization, as well as its token, their core infrastructure and inherent proposition are doomed to fail. The dot-com bubble offers a cautionary tale for Ethereum adopters. It burst partly because institutions dove headfirst into the consumer internet’s lucrative market potential without sufficiently understanding the infrastructure beneath it. The gap between capital and comprehension bred dysfunction. Read more