Crypto

XRP’s design leaves a smaller share of its supply exposed to future quantum attacks than Bitcoin’s, experts said, pointing to additional XRPL features that stand out.

Japan tightens oversight with insider-trading bans and new disclosure rules as crypto markets attract more institutional participation. The Japanese government amended the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act on Friday to classify crypto assets as financial instruments. The amendment also bans insider trading and other activities that involve buying and selling based on undisclosed information, Nikkei reported. The amended act will also now require cryptocurrency “issuers” to be more transparent and disclose information once a year. Read more

Fidelity and Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin ETFs also saw a combined $68.2 million in inflows, while four other Bitcoin ETFs also tallied inflows on Thursday. Investors piled $269.3 million into BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust on Thursday, in its best-performing day since early March, around the time the US-Iran war started to kick into high gear.  The inflows helped to end two days of net outflows among the 12 US spot Bitcoin ETFs, which recorded a net inflow of $358.1 million. Bitcoin ETF inflows are just one way to gauge retail and institutional demand for Bitcoin. Read more

Strong volume pushed price above $1.34, though weak fundamentals and overhead resistance continue to cap follow-through.

The level that has capped every rally during the six-week war remains intact, with analysts saying $75,000 needs to break before the market enters a genuine bullish phase.

xAI argues that the law could force Grok to align with state-defined standards, which would conflict with its goal of “maximally truth-seeking” AI. Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has filed a lawsuit against the state of Colorado, seeking to block incoming AI rules that restrict speech from AI chatbots like Grok. The AI company is specifically challenging Colorado’s Senate Bill 24-205, which aims to protect AI users from “algorithmic discrimination” in areas like employment, housing and finance.  However, in a filing to a US district court in Colorado on Thursday, xAI argued that “Colorado cannot alter xAI’s message simply because it wants to amplify its own views on the highly politicized subjects of fairness and equity.” Read more

The upgrade from flat fees to variable pricing is designed to support the use of AI agents for LLM inference, compute and data queries.  Coinbase has announced an upgrade for the x402 protocol, enabling usage-based pricing for agentic AI compute requests, which replaces the former flat fee model. In a post on X on Thursday, Coinbase Developer Platform announced the "Upto" scheme has gone live, adding it will help open up "variable-cost services" for agentic AI such as large language model inference, compute and data queries. "Until now, x402 only supported exact, fixed-price payments. That works great for deterministic APIs. But it blocked an entire category of services where the cost depends on usage, such as token count, compute time, or query complexity," Coinbase Developer Platform said. Read more

Another Friday is upon us again, which means another batch of Bitcoin options are expiring as the asset holds ground above $70,000. 

A new scheme from a StarkWare researcher works under existing consensus rules, offering an emergency fallback while BIP-360 awaits activation.

A proposed workaround could enable quantum-resistant Bitcoin transactions without a protocol change, but high compute costs limit real-world use. A Bitcoin researcher has come up with a way that could immediately make Bitcoin transactions quantum-safe without the need for a soft fork.  In a proposal published Thursday, StarkWare chief product officer Avihu Levy proposed a Quantum Safe Bitcoin (QSB) transaction scheme that he said would remain secure “even against an adversary with a large-scale quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm.”  He added that the plan requires no changes to the Bitcoin protocol and operates entirely within the existing legacy script constraints. The downside is that it is costly and likely is not useful for everyday transactions, he said.  Read more

The partnership will help the exchange meet Vietnam's $380 million capital requirement to enter a government pilot program aimed at licensing local platforms and curbing offshore trading.

OKX Ventures and HashKey are buying into VPBank-backed CAEX as Vietnam’s strict crypto pilot pushes offshore exchanges toward a challenging onshore licensing regime. CAEX, a crypto platform linked to the Vietnam Prosperity Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VPBank) ecosystem, said OKX Ventures and HashKey Capital are backing the company as it seeks to qualify for Vietnam’s pilot regime for crypto exchanges. CAEX said Friday that the two offshore companies will join VPBank Securities (VPBankS) and technology partner LynkiD as shareholders. According to a release shared with Cointelegraph, their investment is intended to help CAEX reach Vietnam’s minimum charter capital threshold of 10 trillion dong (about $380 million), a key condition for participating in the pilot program. Read more

Mythos can rapidly spot software flaws and craft sophisticated exploits, raising fears of systemic risks in the banking system.

A listing on the NYSE requires a company to meet strict requirements covering financial health, share distribution and corporate governance. Ether treasury company Bitmine Immersion Technologies has started trading on the New York Stock Exchange after uplisting from NYSE American as the company expanded its share buyback program. The Ether (ETH) treasury company’s stock began trading on the NYSE at market open on Thursday under its existing “BMNR” ticker symbol, Bitmine announced Thursday. Bitmine chairman Tom Lee said it’s a major milestone for the company as the NYSE is considered one of the world's top exchanges. Read more

The CIA has already tested AI across 300 projects to process large data sets, assist with language translation and publish reports. The US Central Intelligence Agency said it will embed “AI co-workers” directly into its analytics platforms to assist analysts with detecting spies and anticipating hostile moves by foreign adversaries. “Within the next couple of years, we will have AI co-workers built into all of the agency’s analytic platforms — a kind of classified version of generative AI that will help our analysts with basic tasks,” CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis reportedly said on Thursday during an event hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project in Washington, DC. According to Politico, Ellis said the AI co-workers would assist intelligence officers with drafting key judgments, testing analytical conclusions and identifying trends in intelligence that the agency gathers from abroad. Read more

Crypto firms like Coinbase and Kraken teamed up with government agencies to trace and freeze millions in funds tied to crypto scams and fraud.

TD Cowen remains positive on $55 billion Bitcoin treasury pioneer Strategy, despite trimming its price target yet again.

The Florida attorney general's probe into AI giant OpenAI cites national security and child safety risks tied to ChatGPT.

Newly appointed company president Brett Redfearn briefly worked as Coinbase’s head of capital markets and served for more than three years at the SEC. Tokenization platform Securitize has named Brett Redfearn as president, with the former official at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also joining its board of directors. Securitize’s Thursday notice said Redfearn previously served as the SEC’s director of its division of trading and markets, worked as Coinbase’s head of capital markets and held various roles over a decade spent at JPMorgan. He most recently has been a member of Securitize’s advisory board. Redfearn is the latest former government official who has moved into the crypto industry, highlighting questions about their roles overseeing digital assets while in office. Caroline Pham, who served as a commissioner and acting chair of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), left the agency in December to join crypto payments infrastructure company MoonPay. Read more

Bitcoin continues to show strength even as US recession risks rise and the fragile ceasefire with Iran begins to show cracks. Key takeaways: Bitcoin climbed to $72,000 as rising recession odds and a weak US dollar boosted the appeal of scarce financial assets. Rising oil prices and a wobbly truce with Iran threaten to reverse Bitcoin’s recent gains. Read more