DL News

Security experts have called on South Korean law enforcement agencies to overhaul their crypto management routines after police say they “lost” just under $2 million worth of Bitcoin confiscated during a criminal investigation.

Officers did not explain how the Bitcoin, kept on 22 USB thumb drives in a sealed vault in a police station in Seoul’s Gangnam District, had disappeared, leaving only the drives behind, South Korean newspaper Dong-A Ilbo reported.

Police only confirmed they are “investigating the circumstances surrounding the loss of confiscated Bitcoin.”

The revelations come hot on the heels of the news that prosecutors in the South Korean city of Gwangju last month admitted to “misplacing” over $28 million worth of Bitcoin confiscated from suspected online gambling operators in November 2021.

Investigations continue

Police in Seoul said they’d discovered the loss after the National Police Agency ordered an audit of all confiscated crypto held in cold wallets following the Gwangju case.

The lost Bitcoin was reportedly voluntarily submitted by a suspect during an investigation that dates back to November 2021. The investigation has since been suspended, but the cold wallets remained in police custody.

Unnamed security experts told South Korean newspaper Segye Ilbo the possibility of insider involvement could not be ruled out.

The fact that the Bitcoin had apparently been removed from the drives, leaving the devices intact, raises suspicions that someone with direct access to the cold wallets or their seed phrases may have been involved, the experts said.

The security officials called on the police and public prosecutors to “urgently and fundamentally redesign” their crypto management systems.

An inquiry in the Gwangju case has found evidence the Bitcoin was likely lost by prosecutors who had tried to use online tools to check how much Bitcoin was in cold wallet devices held in their own vaults.

Investigators say the prosecutors connected the wallets to a phishing website that had been disguised as a “cold wallet checker,” allowing criminals to steal the contents of crypto wallets.

The prosecution service says the coins were lost in August during a staff changeover. The Gwangju investigation is ongoing.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

The cryptocurrency market “bubble is imploding” with Bitcoin’s price set to tumble another 85% to $10,000, warns Bloomberg Intelligence strategist Mike McGlone.

While traders may talk about a healthy correction, McGlone says the narrative around crypto is changing for a number of reasons.

“The buy-the-dip-mantra since 2008 may be over,” he wrote.

The factors include surging stock markets with low volatility and the industry losing faith in US President Donald Trump’s crypto boosterism. At the same time, gold and silver traders are grabbing profit “at a velocity last matched about half a century ago,” McGlone noted.

To him, this combination signals that more pain is coming for Bitcoin investors.

The warning — far from McGlone’s first — comes as Bitcoin’s price has already crashed nearly 30% in the past month amid a crypto industry downturn that has wiped out $2 trillion in market value.

Investors have dumped $678 million worth of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds so far in February, extending the $6 billion selloff since November, DefiLlama data shows.

To be sure, there are plenty of heavy hitters still bullish on Bitcoin.

On Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the passage of crypto legislation such as the Clarity Act will shore up investors’ confidence and boost prices.

And institutions such as BlackRock and Goldman Sachs continue to up their exposure to Bitcoin and alternative cryptocurrencies like Ethereum.

Market jitters

Technology sector stocks, which Bitcoin price movements closely follow, are also being hammered by growing fears of severe disruption by artificial intelligence technology, now commonly dubbed the “AI scare trade.”

BlackRock’s flagship tech ETF, which tracks industry leaders like Microsoft, Oracle, and Palantir, is down 23% year-to-date.

On February 1, Microsoft, the largest corporate shareholder of OpenAI, saw its value tank by $357 billion in the second-largest selloff for a single trading session in history.

“Technological innovations tend to be disruptive and dynamic,” said Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research. “That’s especially true with AI, which has the potential to disrupt itself.”

Technical obsolescence is moving at “warp speed,” he said.

“That pace has recently spooked investors who’ve been selling the stocks of any company that might be negatively disrupted by AI.”

Crypto market movers

Bitcoin is down 2.2% over the past 24 hours, trading at $68,717.

Ethereum is down 4.4% past 24 hours at $1,971.

What we’re reading

Bitcoin needs a quantum upgrade. So why isn’t it happening? — DL News

Clarity Act will lift Bitcoin price, says Treasury Secretary Bessent — DL News

BlackRock Just Chose Uniswap. The Market Didn’t Care. Here’s Why. — Unchained

Stop obsessing over the bottom — Milk Road

Binance France boss targeted in failed home invasion wrench attack — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Bitcoin, like much of the world’s digital infrastructure, will need to upgrade its cryptography to new algorithms that cannot be cracked by superfast quantum computers.

Yet so far, that hasn’t happened.

Now, quantum researchers are warning that time’s running out for developers to seriously engage with what by many accounts will be Bitcoin’s biggest ever upgrade.

“The time to start thinking about this is now. An even better time would have been yesterday,” Scott Aaronson, a quantum computing researcher and scientific advisor at Starkware, told DL News.

There are several reasons why Bitcoin hasn’t been upgraded yet, depending on who you ask.

Some say the biggest issue is coordinating the dozens of individual contributors who work to develop the top cryptocurrency.

Others argue it all comes down to timing.

Three to five years

Yet whatever the reason, one thing is clear: The clock is ticking.

Cryptographically relevant quantum computers could be a reality in just three to five years, Hayk Tepanyan, founder of BlueQubit, a quantum computing software developer, told DL News.

Tepanyan said he based his prediction on recent milestones achieved by companies at the forefront of quantum computer development.

A 2024 roadmap from Quantinuum predicted the company will achieve fully fault-tolerant quantum computing by 2030.

“I take all of these roadmaps with a huge grain of salt, because we don’t actually have principles that let us say how long this is going to take,” Aaronson said.

“But what gives me pause is that over the last couple of years Quantinuum and Google have actually been hitting their milestones.”

In November, the US Department of War mandated that its systems must be ready to upgrade to quantum-resistant encryption no later than December 31, 2030.

While such estimates are already alarming, the reality is the technology could progress even faster if new techniques are discovered, potentially blindsiding those who thought they had more time to work on a post-quantum upgrade for Bitcoin.

“You might think this quantum computer with 200,000 physical qubits is not enough for running Shor’s algorithm,” Aaronson said. “But someone else might have some incredible, clever encoding that they haven’t told you about, by which they could fit Shor’s algorithm into that number of physical qubits.”

Shor’s algorithm is a quantum algorithm that can theoretically be used to break the digital signatures that underpin Bitcoin transactions.

Threading the needle

For Bitcoin’s developers, the most difficult work has already been done. Several quantum resistant algorithms already exist.

In August 2024, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology officially finalised three post-quantum cryptography standards for federal use, with a fourth on the way.

We’ve seen before that NIST algorithms can break.

Chris Tam

The major hurdle, quantum researchers say, is timing.

Upgrade Bitcoin too early, and the new cryptography, which was believed to be quantum resistant, could turn out to be just as vulnerable as what it replaced.

While the NIST algorithms are understood to be quantum resistant, it’s impossible to know for sure.

“We’ve seen before that NIST algorithms can break,” Chris Tam, president and head of innovation at BTQ, a company focused on developing post-quantum cryptography, told DL News. In 2022, one NIST-standardised post-quantum signature scheme from 2016 was broken using a consumer-grade laptop in just 53 hours, Tam said.

Yet upgrade too late, and billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin — including Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto’s $75 billion stash — will be snatched away by whoever develops the technology the fastest, obliterating confidence in the top cryptocurrency and likely destroying its value among investors.

“It’s going to be a tricky balance,” Tepanyan said. “You want to give enough time to look at the algorithms so you don’t rush and upgrade to something that’s also vulnerable to attacks.”

According to Tepanyan, Rivest-Shamir-Adleman, or RSA, the cryptographic algorithm used to secure digital communications, among other things, took eight to ten years to enter mainstream use after it was introduced in 1977.

“The current post-quantum cryptography proposals are kind of getting there,” Tepanyan said.

Coordination issues

To be sure, some Bitcoin contributors are endeavouring to make Bitcoin quantum resistant.

In February, Bitcoin developers Hunter Beast and Ethan Heilman introduced a new transaction output that defends against the easiest forms of quantum attack. But it only applies to future transactions, and doesn’t do anything to protect the some $160 billion worth of Bitcoin in vulnerable wallets.

In December, Blockstream researchers Mikhail Kudinov and Jonas Nick proposed that Bitcoin could be upgraded to rely on hash-based signatures, one of the post-quantum cryptography standards formalised by NIST.

“What hash-based signatures have going for them is that they’re some of the oldest forms of math, in that they are as old and as well understood as elliptic curves,” Tam said.

Yet overall, progress has been slow. A big hurdle is that many developers don’t agree on how soon an upgrade should be prioritised, or what the best approach is.

Quantum isn’t a real threat. Bitcoin has much bigger problems to address.

Luke Dashjr

Many of the most influential people in Bitcoin development — such as Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, and best known for inventing the proof-of-work system used in Bitcoin mining — argue that the threat is still decades away.

Some prominent developers have even denied the threat altogether.

“Quantum isn’t a real threat. Bitcoin has much bigger problems to address,” Luke Dashjr, a Bitcoin Core developer, said in December.

Bitcoin’s development is decentralised, meaning the network is maintained by a collective of contributors and has no central authoritative body. Because of this, large upgrades need to reach a consensus among contributors to have any hope of making it to production.

History shows that’s easier said than done.

Between 2015 and 2017 Bitcoin developers clashed over whether or not to increase the amount of data Bitcoin blocks can handle. The disagreement was so contentious it resulted in the network splitting in two, creating the Bitcoin Cash blockchain in August 2017.

More recently, disputes over whether non-financial Bitcoin transactions should be allowed on the network have also split opinions.

Unknown unknowns

Still, many Bitcoin developers are confident that, as things stand, there is no rush to make Bitcoin quantum resistant.

But according to researchers, the situation can potentially change overnight.

I wouldn’t be so sure about everyone playing super nice and publishing all their results.

Hayk Tepanyan

For the most part, the development of quantum computing hardware is predictable, and its progress can be extrapolated into the future with decent accuracy.

But hardware is only half of the equation. The more unpredictable element, researchers say, is the algorithms that can be fed into quantum computers to get them to do work.

“Where things get tricky is trying to predict the algorithmic innovations,” Tepanyan said.

“We could actually wake up one day, and there’s this paper or this result from this academic group or company or governmental National Lab that cuts the resource requirements by like 100x.”

To add to the uncertainty, the closer scientists get to creating powerful quantum computers or discovering new algorithms, the less they are willing to share about their progress. Because of this secrecy, it will become increasingly difficult to know how close researchers are to creating a cryptographically relevant quantum computer.

“When you’re getting to very important milestones, and breaking Bitcoin would be a huge milestone, I wouldn’t be so sure about everyone playing super nice and publishing all their results,” Tepanyan said.

For Aaronson, the situation is similar to the development of nuclear weapons almost 100 years ago.

“In 1939 scientists were still publishing in journals whatever they figured out about nuclear fission. But then by 1940, when they’re calculating exactly how much uranium 235 would you need for a chain reaction? At that point, they realised they shouldn’t publish anymore.”

There are already signs quantum development is going dark.

Back in the 1990s, Tepanyan said, researchers would freely publish and share their designs for creating qubits, the basic unit of information used is quantum computers. Now quantum computers have gotten closer to reality, and the potential benefits — and profits — are more tangible, that doesn’t happen anymore.

And it’s not just big companies like Google and Microsoft that Bitcoin developers need to be concerned about. Nation states and government labs are almost certainly looking into quantum computing, too.

“It’s even harder to predict how they are going to behave,” Tepanyan said.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

Russians are conducting crypto deals worth a total of around $648 million per day, the country’s finance ministry says.

Cryptocurrency usage in Russia is “only continuing to grow,” Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov told media representatives this week, Russian media outlet RBC reported.

“We’ve repeatedly said that millions of citizens are involved in crypto trading,” Chebeskov said. “That represents trillions of rubles’ worth of [purchases] and savings. The annual transaction volume in Russia is over [$130 billion]. All of that is currently occurring in unregulated spaces. It’s outside the scope of our control.”

Moscow says it wants to fast-track regulations this year, aware that the size of its crypto derivatives and other blockchain-powered financial instruments has grown beyond the $13 billion mark.

Fast track

Vladimir Chistyukhin, First Deputy Chairman of the Russian central bank, told reporters that he expected lawmakers to approve new regulations for the crypto market during the State Duma’s upcoming spring session.

Both the government and the bank now back regulations, Chistyukhin said.

“[We] will provide a transition period for market participants to obtain the necessary licenses, develop the necessary internal documents to begin operations, and legalise this part of the [financial] markets.”

The law will focus mainly on exchanges and will impose a system of penalties for trading platforms that fail to obtain operating permits.

The ministry said it made its calculations using the anti-money laundering agency Rosfinmonitoring’s Transparent Blockchain platform.

Senior officials from the Moscow Exchange, Russia’s biggest stock market, said they also wanted to “compete for a slice” of the crypto “pie.”

The exchange and several of Russia’s biggest banks said they were ready to provide their customers with a range of crypto-related services once the legislation rolls out.

Crypto market movers

Bitcoin is down by almost 1% over the past 24 hours, currently trading at $68,991.

Ethereum is down 3% in the past 24 hours, and is priced at $1,999.

What we’re reading

Aave Labs proposes paying DAO all revenue from Aave-branded products — DL News

Clarity Act will lift Bitcoin price, says Treasury Secretary Bessent — DL News

An abduction, a Bitcoin demand and a TV icon - why Nancy Guthrie’s case has gripped the US — BBC

Is Coinbase dying or evolving? — Milk Road

Bitcoin to $50,000? Standard Chartered predicts ‘more pain’ for price — DL News

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

South Korea’s biggest securities player has agreed a $92 million deal to take over Korbit, the country’s oldest crypto exchange.

The deal will see Mirae Asset, a firm with $418 billion in total assets under management, buy 92% of Korbit’s shares, subject to regulatory approval.

The goal of the takeover for Mirae is “securing digital asset-powered future growth engines,” the firm said in a statement, South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported.

Mirae Asset’s share price surged on news of the deal, rising by a total of over 15% over the past five days. Over the past six months, the company’s share prices have rocketed by 226%.

If the Financial Services Commission signs off on the deal, it will complete a tectonic shift in the South Korean crypto exchange market. All five of the country’s permit-holding exchanges began life as small IT startups.

But with South Korea’s largest big tech firm waiting for approval of its own merger with the market-leading Upbit exchange, and rumours of further sales continuing to circulate, traders may soon need to navigate a radically altered market landscape.

Custody plans

“This is the first time an institutional financial company will have a crypto exchange as a subsidiary,” an unnamed financial investment industry official told South Korean newspaper Maeil Kyungjae. “It is highly likely that this will lead to the development of various derivatives, such as securities tokens and crypto custody offerings.”

Mirae Asset will bypass rules that block financial firms from direct crypto industry takeovers by carrying out the deal via its Mirae Asset Consulting subsidiary.

The deal will see the securities firm take over the gaming firm Nexon’s controlling 61% share in Korbit, as well as the telecoms giant SK’s SK Planet subsidiary’s 31.5% share.

Despite its early dominance of the South Korean Bitcoin trading scene, Korbit’s market share has dwindled in recent years, falling to around 1%, far behind Upbit’s 60-70% share.

However, Mirae will aim to reverse this trend. Last year, the firm posted net profits of $1.1 billion, a 72% year-on-year rise. The company has since announced plans to reinvest its profits into “digital asset business growth.”

It will be buoyed by sky-high stock market performance and its own record-breaking earnings. The Korea Composite Stock Price Index, the index of all common shares on the Korea Exchange, reached an all-time high earlier this year.

Stocks surging

Analysts report that many Bitcoin traders have abandoned stagnant crypto markets in favour of the domestic stock market.

The data appears to back these claims up. In late January, Upbit’s daily trading volume dropped to $755 million, per CoinGecko data, down over 90% from mid-July 2025 peaks of around $10 billion.

President Lee Jae-myung has also prioritised a domestic stock market revival, making KOSPI growth the cornerstone of his economic policy.

Lee has bemoaned the popularity of overseas stock investment, real estate purchases, and “speculative” trading.

“There is a lot of money in South Korea, but where is it going?” he asked last year, during a meeting with Mirae chief and other securities firms.

The issue of deregulation for securities firms was also on the table at the same meeting, emboldening Mirae to make its Korbit move.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

President Donald Trump isn’t slowing down with his crypto business ventures, with the US leader’s company filing for two new ETFs.

Truth Social Funds, an ETF issuer from Trump Media and Technology Group, of which the president is majority owner, announced Friday that it had filed for a Bitcoin and Ethereum fund and crypto yield fund.

The crypto yield product, dubbed the “Truth Social Cronos Yield Maximizer ETF”, will give investors exposure to the performance of CRO, the native token of Cronos. The Bitcoin and Ethereum fund, the “Truth Social Bitcoin and Ether ETF”, will track the two biggest cryptocurrencies.

Crypto exchange Crypto.com is working with Trump Media to debut the products, the announcement said.

Last year, the president’s company made a deal with Crypto.com to debut ETFs. Some criticised the move following news that 70 billion previously destroyed CRO tokens would be reissued. Trump Media also last year said it would start a CRO digital asset treasury.

The crypto ETF market is already a crowded one, popular products by top asset managers BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale already on the market. Trump Media last year filed for another Bitcoin ETF and a fund tracking a basket of cryptocurrencies.

“These two digital asset ETFs have a strong value proposition that Crypto.com is supportive of and look forward to providing traders access to,” Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek said in a statement.

Trump Media did not immediately respond to questions from DL News but the filings come as the Trump family continue their push into the crypto world, with a dizzying amount of ventures.

Some have sparked backlash, though, with Democrats criticising the business moves and accusing the president’s family of lining its pockets.

The Wall Street Journal in January reported that the Trump Administration agreed to give the UAE access to American-made AI chips in return for investment in World Liberty Financial, a decentralised finance product backed by Trump and his sons.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Bitcoin and Ethereum rose slightly on Saturday before dipping, erasing any gains they may have notched for the week.

But one coin is stealing the show: Dogecoin.

The ninth biggest cryptocurrency by market value and original memecoin was recently trading 11% higher over a 24-hour period, according to CoinGecko. The coin is the biggest gainer over the past day out of large cap cryptocurrencies.

Dogecoin’s price stood at nearly $0.11 per coin at 2pm in New York. The reason may well be news that X — formerly Twitter — is bringing crypto trading to its platform. Writing on the website Saturday, X’s head of product said that a new feature in the coming weeks will “enable you to trade stocks and crypto directly from timeline.”

Dogecoin has in the past made gains off the back of X-related payments news. X owner and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has frequently pumped Dogecoin over the years in interviews and on X by calling it his favourite cryptocurrency.

In the past, he has even claimed that the volatile coin — currently 85% below its 2021 record — would be a good option for transactions.

ETF action

Bitcoin’s gains on Saturday were short-lived: the biggest coin rose to $70,434 before dipping again and was recently trading hands for $69,798.

Over the past week, the coin is flat following net outflows from US Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. The popular trading products saw dribbles of inflows only to be offset by investors cashing out mid-week.

Data from Farside Investors shows that investors cashed out a total of $360 million from the funds, managed by the likes of BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale.

Ethereum spiked higher than Bitcoin, briefly trading at nearly $2,100, before dipping again. It was trading at $2,080, a rise of 1% over the past day. Investors also cashed out a total of $161 million over the week from US Ethereum ETFs.

Bitcoin Bottom in?

It’s not looking good for Bitcoin since a crash last week sunk the asset to nearly $60,000. Markets have been battered since October when over $19 billion in crypto bets were wiped out in the largest liquidation event in the history of the asset class.

Then, last week, selling intensified when many more billions of dollars in leveraged bets got liquidated. Investors wanted to derisk over Trump’s Federal Reserve chair nomination last week: Kevin Warsh — who’s typically been an inflation hawk in the past and could therefore be in no rush to cut interest rates.

And Bitcoin could be in for more pain, according to experts: British bank Standard Chartered forecasted the coin could crash to $50,000 before stabilizing, and blockchain analysts CryptoQuant said $55,000 per coin was a realistic bottom.

Crypto market movers

Bitcoin is up nearly 1% over the past 24 hours, trading at $69,428.

Ethereum is up 4% past 24 hours and is priced at $2,051.

What we’re reading

Ethereum Foundation co-director resigns to focus on AI — DL News

Aave Labs proposes paying DAO all revenue from Aave-branded products — DL News

BlackRock Just Chose Uniswap. The Market Didn’t Care. Here’s Why. — Unchained

Small caps break out. Is crypto next? — Milk Road

High-Conviction Bets Turn Toxic in Week of Wall Street Reversals — Bloomberg

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Crypto trading will be available on X in the next couple of weeks, the app’s head of product has said, years after owner Elon Musk spoke about making the platform an “everything app.”

Writing on the platform Saturday, X’s Nikita Bier said that the feature will work via Smart Cashtags — a new function announced in January giving users live pricing information for crypto and stocks.

“We are launching a number of features in a couple weeks, including Smart Cashtags that will enable you to trade stocks and crypto directly from timeline,” wrote Bier.

I genuinely want crypto to proliferate on X, but applications that create incentives to spam, raid, and harass random users is not the way.

It meaningfully degrades the experience for millions of people — only to enrich a few people.

And yes, we are launching a number of…

— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) February 14, 2026

Bier announced Smart Cashtags last month though did not reveal that the feature would also allow X users to buy and sell assets.

The latest announcement comes as Musk prepares to launch X Money, the payments arm of the social media platform. Musk has talked about bringing crypto and payments to X — formerly Twitter — since he bought the platform in 2022.

Open claw bots

Bier’s announcement came during a debate about spam and claiming fees on X.

Responding to a comment from someone saying OpenClaw developer Peter Steinberger could claim “at least $100k in fees” from people creating tokens, Bier said that X would soon ban apps creating fee pools for non-consenting users.

OpenClaw is an AI agent app. Its creator Steinberger has bemoaned being harassed by people urging him to interact with their tokens and — sometimes scammy — crypto projects inspired by his app.

“We intend to update our API policies to block apps that create fee pools for non-consenting users,” wrote Bier.

‘All the money’

Elon Musk has previously said that he wants X to rival China’s WeChat — a platform where people can get information on everything, make payments, and generally just organise their lives.

Back in 2023, Musk obtained money transmitting licenses in the US for X. A fan of memecoin Dogecoin, there has even been speculation in the past that Musk would integrate the ninth biggest cryptocurrency for transactions on the platform.

But Musk wants X to be where people do all their monetary transactions.

At a presentation this week, Musk said of X Money: “This is really intended to be the place where all the money is.

“The central source of all monetary transactions. It’s really going to be a game-changer.”

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

As crypto prices reel, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday that advancing stalled crypto legislation, including the long-debated Clarity Act, will help steady battered markets and restore investor confidence.

Bitcoin’s price has fallen roughly half from its October 2025 record high, and Washington remains deadlocked over how to regulate crypto.

In a Thursday interview with CNBC, Bessent was asked what he thought about the current state of crypto prices.

“Bitcoin has a history of volatile movement,” Bessent said. “But part of the volatility here is self induced: there is a group of Democrats who want to work with Republicans on getting a market structure bill — it’s called the Clarity bill — but there are a group of crypto firms who have been blocking it.”

Crypto executives have been hashing out the Clarity Act with US banking representatives and regulators at the White House the past month.

The bill, which aims to set in stone digital asset regulation, has been in a deadlock after the US’ biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase, pulled support for the bill in January.

Since then, crypto bigwigs and banking representatives have continued to meet, with lawyers from Ripple and Coinbase saying that meetings this week were “productive” and that “progress was made.”

‘Comfort to markets’

Bessent went on to say that while crypto investors should know what they’re getting themselves into when buying the volatile asset class, clear legislation would help soothe markets.

Bitcoin’s price has shed nearly 50% of its value since it notched a new all-time high in October. Ethereum, the second biggest cryptocurrency by market value, has fared worse, now worth $2,048, a 58% drop from its high of $4,946 in August.

Crypto markets tanked in October when the biggest liquidation event in Bitcoin’s history wiped out $19 billion in leveraged bets. Major coins have struggled to recover since.

“So in a time when we are having one of these historically volatile selloffs, I think some clarity on the Clarity bill would give great comfort to the market, and we could move forward from there,” added Bessent. “It’s very important to get this done.”

Meanwhile, regulators and senior banking executives have clashed with the crypto industry over one of the bill’s most contentious elements, the rules governing stablecoins.

Banking executives have warned that unless Congress bans stablecoin rewards, people will park their money on crypto exchanges, rather than banks. That would limit banks’ ability to lend to US businesses, the executives say.

Coinbase and other crypto companies are pushing for their yield-bearing stablecoin products to continue. They counter that stricter limits will curb innovation and tilt the playing field in favour of “TradFi” incumbents.

“There’s a lot of innovation that goes on adjacent to crypto — in the blockchain, in DeFi — so I think it’s important to get this clarity bill done as soon as possible, and on the president’s desk this spring,” said Bessent.

Crypto executives and banking chiefs now have until March 1 to reach an agreement on the market structure bill.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Binance has confirmed that a member of its team is safe after local media reported that the crypto exchange’s French CEO was targeted in a failed wrench attack.

French publication RTL reported Friday that three hooded men tried to break into the Val-de-Marne home of David Prinçay, the executive, on Thursday.

When they realised he wasn’t at home, they stole two phones and left before being caught by police later in the day, according to reports. A woman was also hurt in the incident after the attackers searched the wrong home, RTL added.

“There are reports circulating regarding one of our French employees. We can confirm that he and his family are safe and actively working with law enforcement,” Binance said in an emailed statement.

“We understand that three individuals connected to this matter have been arrested by authorities. The investigation remains ongoing, and we are continuing to cooperate fully,” the exchange added.

Binance would not respond to further questions from DL News and did not name which employee was targeted.

Prinçay and French cops did not immediately respond to questions.

Wrench attacks — when physical violence is used to steal crypto — surged in 2025. A tracker created by Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp counted more than 70 attacks during the year.

These attacks have haunted the crypto sphere for years, but a string of high-profile violent attacks over the past year has significantly raised the threat level for crypto investors.

And 2026 hasn’t gotten off to a good start: Lopp’s tracker has so far counted 14 incidents.

A large number of wrench attacks are happening in France, too, with 11 of 14 2026’s incidents taking place in the European nation.

Wrench attacks have happened for years but made headlines in 2025 when crooks kidnapped David Balland, co-founder of crypto hardware wallet brand Ledger, and his wife in France.

Criminals held the pair for around 24 hours before they were rescued by the French authorities.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Tomasz Stańczak, a co-director of the Ethereum Foundation, will resign at the end of the month, he said on Friday.

He will be replaced by Bastian Aue, a member of the Foundation’s leadership team. Hsiao-Wei Wang will remain as the Foundation’s other executive director.

Stańczak’s resignation comes less than a year after he and Wang were appointed as co-executive directors, replacing the organisation’s longtime, embattled leader, Aya Miyaguchi. Miyaguchi remained as a member of the Foundation’s four-person board alongside Ethereum co-founder and figurehead Vitalik Buterin.

In a blog post explaining his departure, Stańczak said he would continue working on Ethereum as a “hands-on product builder” with a focus on artificial intelligence.

“I know now that agentic systems and AI-assisted discovery are reshaping the world,” he wrote. “I am well aware of the impermanence or even uselessness of some of the agentic ideas, but it is the playful experimentation that defined much of the early Ethereum innovation.”

Stańczak also suggested his departure was prompted in part by his shrinking role at the Foundation.

“The leaders at the EF grew more confident about making decisions by themselves and owning more,” he wrote.

“While my ability to execute independently at the EF diminishes over time, my time at the organization in 2026 would feel more and more like just staying around to pass the baton.”

Stańczak said the Foundation would soon publish several major proposals, including the details of a “lean” Ethereum and proposed roadmaps for the blockchain’s ongoing development and for “DeFi coordination.”

Stańczak and Wang were appointed to replace Miyaguchi in March 2025, after Miyaguchi had become a target for Ethereum investors frustrated with the cryptocurrency’s middling performance in the wake of Donald Trump’s reelection in the US.

Among other things, critics had assailed the Foundation for not taking a more muscular approach to Ethereum development.

Miyaguchi and Buterin, concerned the Foundation would become the de facto leader of an ecosystem that was meant to be decentralised, portrayed the Foundation’s role as that of coordinating Ethereum’s disparate developers, rather than leading its development.

Under Stańczak and Wang, the Foundation laid off 19 employees, turned its focus from layer 2 blockchains to scaling Ethereum itself, began promoting the blockchain in a series of videos released on social media, and pushed the pace of Ethereum upgrades.

They also launched initiatives focused on privacy, the threat of quantum computers, and artificial intelligence.

“The ecosystem called out,” Stańczak told DL News in an exclusive interview last year.

“You’re operating too disorganised, you need to operate a bit more centralised and way more accelerated to be there for this critical period.”

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can contact him at aleks@dlnews.com.

A version of this article appeared in our The Roundup newsletter on February 13. Sign up here.

Hi. Eric here.

Wall Street is hunting for crypto talent.

BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and CitiGroup are just some of the traditional finance players who are actively recruiting for candidates with crypto know-how, according to roles advertised on their websites.

But this is just the beginning as the financial heavyweights adopt digital assets like never before, crypto-focused recruiters say.

“When I speak with CEOs from TradFi who are now building digital assets, they consistently say the same thing: Crypto will ultimately be integrated into TradFi, not exist separately,” Sam Wellalage, founder of the recruitment agency WorkInCrypto, told me.

Indeed, Wall Street’s recruitment efforts come in a week where Goldman Sachs has unveiled that it has $2 billion worth of crypto exposure, and BlackRock scooped up an undisclosed amount of Uniswap governance tokens.

At the same time, a slew of financial heavyweights are gearing up to attend the World Liberty Forum, the crypto event organised by the Trump family’s crypto venture, next week.

US President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto policies are often credited for Wall Street’s return to digital assets. His promises to make the country the crypto capital of the world and his championing of light-touch regulations have emboldened banks, investment companies and fintech firms to explore blockchain-based businesses.

It is against this backdrop that several of these firms are now sourcing talent to bolster their digital asset teams.

“Institutional recruitment in 2026 will be about finding digital asset leaders who can operate at the intersection of capital, markets, and regulation — not just crypto enthusiasm,” Wellalage said.

At a time when the total cryptocurrency market has lost $2 trillion, or half, of its value since October, it is encouraging that firms are still looking to strengthen their digital asset teams.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao says he ‘didn’t do much’ to get Trump pardon

Binance’s co-founder Changpeng Zhao said he didn’t do much to make Trump pardon him. Tim Craig reports on the crypto mogul’s latest comments.

Bitcoin narrative woes: How Trump Fed pick Kevin Warsh will finally give price stability

In his latest column, Wolfgang Münchau argues that one of Bitcoin’s biggest problems is that it struggles to find a narrative that fits. Yet, Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve may fix that.

Robinhood crypto revenue falls 38% as CEO says not to be ‘distracted by short term’ fluctuations

Robinhood has led the wave of fintech firms that have muscled into crypto. While this provides them with plenty of opportunities, it also exposes them to risks, as Robinhood’s fourth quarter earnings showed this week. Mathew Di Salvo reports.

Post of the Week

Coinbase spent millions on its Super Bowl ad, but not everyone was impressed.

pic.twitter.com/gCGsRQm2LC

— Bold (@boldleonidas) February 9, 2026

Coinbase’s stock price will surge by 212% to hit $440, according to Bernstein.

The research and brokerage firm revealed the price target in a Friday note to investors shared with DL News. The analysts provided no timeline for when Coinbase may achieve the stock price, which reached a record closing price of $444 in July.

Bernstein’s forecast comes on the back of the leading US crypto exchange reporting that its losses grew to $667 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, a 151% drop from the last three months of 2024.

“Unfortunately, with COIN fully exposed to crypto markets, there is nowhere to hide,” Gautum Chhugani and his three Bernstein colleagues wrote in the note.

Yet, the analysts argued that Coinbase’s balance sheet remains strong, and that they expect the market to recover later in 2026 and 2027.

“Hence, we would wait out the crypto volatility and take the pain here, rather than panic close to the market lows,” they wrote.

Bernstein’s price target injects some much needed optimism into the crypto industry’s narrative. Cryptocurrencies have lost $2 trillion, or roughly half, of their combined total value since October. Bitcoin is down 47% in the same period.

Some suggest that the market is in for more pain. Even so, Bernstein’s analysts argue that not only will the market recover, but that Coinbase has already launched a smattering of initiatives that will position it to capitalise on the next rally.

That includes acquisitions like its $2.9 billion purchase of crypto options exchange Deribit, and launching its prediction market and stock market-trading services.

“The goal is to position Coinbase as the single trusted venue for trading the full range of assets customers want — crypto, derivatives, equities, and prediction markets,” Bernstein wrote.

Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email him at eric@dlnews.com.

Things are looking brutal.

The $2 trillion crypto industry wipeout has decimated market sentiment. Bitcoin is down 47% from its October peak — with market watchers expecting more pain to come.

Other top crypto assets have fallen even more, with Ethereum trading at a 60% discount and Solana 73%.

Indeed, crypto startups raised just $18.5 million this week, DefiLlama data shows.

That’s the worst week since the New Year holiday break and one of the leanest periods over the past two years.

Yet the massacre is not changing frontier investors’ minds about the fledgling industry, venture capitalists say.

“The fundamentals of blockchain companies have actually strengthened,” Charlie Sandor, partner at venture capital firm CMT Digital, told DL News.

“What we’ve seen change is how future token outcomes are being valued, which has brought valuations down for projects with token outcomes where expectations were previously priced much higher,” Sandor said.

Sandor said that he expects deal terms to “stay measured” with money going to projects with “real usage and revenue.”

Here are the top three raises this week.

Bullshot, $7.5 million

Bullshot, an artificial intelligence-powered meme token launchpad built on the BNB Chain, announced it raised $7.5 million in a private round backed by Animoca Brands and Genesis Capital as well as other investors.

The platform uses automation to enable one-click token creation, lowering technical barriers for issuers. It also incorporates what it describes as anti-bot protections designed to curb predatory trading behaviour.

Bullshot says it has facilitated the launch of more than 70,000 tokens, reflecting sustained appetite for fair-launch meme assets within the BNB ecosystem.

Levl, $7 million

Swiss-based Levl, a stablecoin infrastructure provider spun out of Galaxy Digital, closed a $7 million seed round led by Galaxy Ventures, Fortune reported.

The firm offers a unified platform connecting traditional banking rails with blockchain-based settlement, enabling instant global payments using fiat and stablecoins such as USDC.

With regulatory approvals in Switzerland and Canada, Levl said it had an annualised transaction volume exceeding $1 billion within four months of launch.

Birch Hill Holdings, $2.5 million

New York-based Birch Hill Holdings secured $2.5 million in a pre-seed round co-led by ParaFi Capital and Castle Island Ventures.

Founded by former structured credit and risk professionals from Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, the firm is building institutional-grade infrastructure for on-chain lending and real-world asset tokenisation.

Its proprietary product is a collateral risk framework designed to provide fiduciaries with auditable oversight and governance standards tailored to decentralised credit markets.

You’re reading the latest instalment of The Weekly Raise, our column covering fundraising deals across the crypto and DeFi spaces, powered by DefiLlama.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

BlackRock is doubling down on Ethereum by buying up more Bitmine shares during the market dip, the firm disclosed on Thursday.

The asset manager’s Bitmine holdings surged by 166% to $246 million in the fourth-quarter of 2025, according to a 13F-HR form filed with the SEC, Fintel data shows.

Tom Lee, the chair of Bitmine who predicts $250,000 per Ethereum, commented on the move with clapping emojis in a post on X.

BlackRock’s big vote of confidence comes as Ethereum’s price has fallen by 60% from its August peak to trade at just under $2,000.

And the price could plunge another 25% to $1,400, Geoffrey Kendrick, head of digital assets research at the British bank Standard Chartered, said in an investor note shared with DL News.

Bitmine is the second-largest digital asset treasury company that mostly holds Ethereum. Its share price, which represents a levered bet on Ethereum, has also plunged nearly 70% over the past six months to $20 per share.

Crypto industry pioneers have dumped their Ethereum tokens en masse in February.

Vitalik Buterin, the blockchain’s co-founder, dumped at least $7 million worth last week in order to fund new initiatives. Stani Kulechov, founder of decentralised finance platform Aave, sold off over $8 million worth of world’s second largest cryptocurrency.

And Bitmine itself is underwater at least $6.6 billion on its Ether purchases.

Yet Wall Street’s best have been buying the dip. On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs disclosed it now owns just over $1 billion in Ethereum exchange-traded funds.

“The best investment opportunities in crypto have presented themselves after declines,” Lee said on Monday after Bitmine purchased another $80 million worth of Ethereum.

Still bullish

Poor market performance isn’t denting BlackRock’s conviction in the second-largest cryptocurrency.

In January, the firm said that Ethereum will lead the tokenisation of real-world assets.

It cited the fact that some 66% of all tokenised assets are on Ethereum, dwarfing Binance’s BNB Chain ecosystem which commands 10%. Far behind are Solana at 5%, Arbitrum at 4%, Stellar at 4%, and Avalanche at 3%.

In January, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink described tokenisation as necessary while speaking on a World Economic Forum panel in Davos, Switzerland.

Crypto market movers

Bitcoin is down 0.7% over the past 24 hours, trading at $66,582.

Ethereum is down 0.4% past 24 hours at $1,955.

What we’re reading

Aave Labs proposes paying DAO all revenue from Aave-branded products — DL News

The superstars attending Trumps’ World Liberty Forum on February 18 — DL News

UNI Spikes on BlackRock DeFi Move, Then Gives It All Back — Unchained

The Structural Bull Case for Crypto in a Changing Liquidity Regime w/ Jamie Coutts — Milk Road

Why Tether is forecast ‘flippening everything’ as Bitcoin and Ethereum prices tumble — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

They come to mould the future.

Donald Trump Jr., US President Donald Trump’s oldest son and co-founder of World Liberty Financial, said that’s the aim of the superstar roster attending a splashy event hosted at the Mar-a-Lago.

Besides the forum’s hosts, World Liberty Financial, a “select group of 300 global leaders,” including banking chiefs, global football bosses, and crypto chieftains, will attend the event on February 18.

“This forum is about defining what the next century of American innovation, leadership, and economic influence will look like,” Donald Trump Jr. said in a statement.

The timing of the gathering at the president’s Florida resort is notable.

Not only is the 79-year-old losing his support among the electorate, but rumblings suggest he may also no longer have the full-hearted backing of the crypto industry either.

Though the president‘s pro-crypto policies initially triggered an unprecedented rally in digital assets in 2025, investors have seen $2 trilion wiped out since October.

At the same time, key market-structure legislation has stalled on Capitol Hill because politicians and industry players can’t agree on the details of the Clarity Act.

The Trumps are also under pressure politically.

House Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have accused the president of corruption, saying that his family’s crypto ventures suggest that Donald Trump “has leveraged his office to make himself a crypto billionaire.”

The White House has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

It is against this backdrop that some of the most powerful people in corporate America and, indeed, the rest of the world will gather in Florida next week.

Here’s who’s set to speak at Mar-a-Lago.

Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon is confirmed as a speaker.

Known for his banking prowess and side-hustle as a DJ, Solomon’s presence underscores how conservative financial institutions are diving headfirst into crypto.

On Tuesday, Goldman disclosed over $2 billion in exposure to Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Solana through exchange-traded funds on its balance sheet.

Nasdaq, NYSE

Adena Friedman, CEO of Nasdaq, adds to the institutional presence.

Under her tenure, the exchange has expanded data services, index products, and connectivity across global markets.

Lynn Martin, president of the New York Stock Exchange, brings the exchange’s voice to the forum.

The NYSE remains one of the world’s most storied and liquid trading venues, anchoring global public markets and drawing deep ties from pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and institutional capital.

FIFA

FIFA president Gianni Infantino will bring global sport into the crypto conversation.

Infantino made headlines in late 2025 by introducing the FIFA Peace Prize, which was awarded to Trump in December.

The award, however, seemingly landed Infantino in hot water.

By handing the 79-year-old the prize, Infantino broke FIFA’s rules on political neutrality, according to a letter sent by human rights campaign group FairSquare.

“The FIFA president does not have the authority to unilaterally dictate the organisation’s mission, strategic direction, policies and values,” FairSquare wrote.

Regulators

Michael Selig, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is also confirmed to speak.

During Trump’s presidency, the CFTC gained greater crypto oversight and began to shape derivatives, futures markets, and digital assets.

The Clarity Act is expected to grant the commission even more oversight authority, but it has been gridlocked by a delayed Senate vote.

Also speaking is Kelly Loeffler, the head of the Small Business Administration, the federal agency that supports entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Jacob Helberg, the White House’s under secretary for economic affairs, is also listed as a speaker. He is also a senior adviser to Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir Technologies.

Senators

Political weight comes from Republican Senators Ashley Moody of Florida and Bernie Moreno of Ohio.

Moody is a strong Trump supporter who previously served as Florida’s attorney general, where she led anti-fraud initiatives.

Moreno is a former crypto entrepreneur himself and actively advocates for the industry.

Their participation highlights how state leadership is engaging with crypto trends, regulatory shifts and innovation policy.

Investors

Avenue Capital Group CEO Marc Lasry, the former Milwaukee Bucks co-owner who has said he views Bitcoin as a resilient store of value and famously regrets not accumulating more, is also scheduled to speak.

Starwood Capital Group CEO Barry Sternlicht, a real estate magnate who says he has allocated 3% of his net worth into crypto, is also set to present.

They are joined by Altimeter Capital founder Brad Gerstner, also a big crypto bull, who sees volatility as a healthy catalyst for market discovery.

Jenny Johnson, the CEO of Franklin Templeton and a long-time blockchain backer, is also expected to promote crypto at the event.

World Liberty Financial

The founding team behind World Liberty Financial is expected to present.

That includes presidential sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., as well as Zach and Alex Witkoff, the sons of Trump’s foreign policy adviser Steve Witkoff.

They are flanked by co-founders Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, who also serve as World Liberty Financial’s chief operating officer.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email them at lance@dlnews.com and eric@dlnews.com.

Coinbase revenue and profit slid in the final quarter of last year, following a brutal Bitcoin selloff that is still hurting crypto markets.

The US’ biggest crypto exchange on Thursday posted a net income loss of $667 million for the final three months of the year, down from a $1.3 billion profit from the same period in 2024.

Transaction revenue in the last quarter of 2025 stood at $982.7 million, a 36% drop compared to the same quarter in 2024. Total revenue for the period dropped to $1.8 billion from $2.3 billion the year before.

Awesome growth in 2025. Excited for 2026.

The future of finance is on Coinbase. https://t.co/oMqzZn3EYC

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) February 12, 2026

“We’re the most trusted brand in crypto,” Brian Armstrong said in an earnings call Thursday. “We’ll keep buying Bitcoin, we’ll continue to buy our stock back, and we won’t stop building now.”

Coinbase stock faced increased volatility ahead of its earnings after analysts slashed ratings for the exchange, and users reported Thursday that they were unable to make transactions on the platform.

Its Nasdaq-listed stock slid 8% ahead of earnings but then popped in after hours trading. Year-to-date, it has dropped more than 40%, and hasn’t been this low since February 2024.

Stablecoin business booms

But the subscription side of things boomed, most notably from stablecoins. Revenue from the tokens came in at $364 million, up 61% year-over-year. Coinbase allows users to earn yield on their stablecoins, a product launched in 2021.

The product is increasingly controversial, though: banks have warned that allowing users to earn yield on stablecoins like USDC could lead to deposit withdrawals — and called for Congress to ban the practice.

Armstrong in January pulled support for the draft legislation, citing bankers’ gripe with stablecoin rewards as one of the reasons for amending the bill. But crypto executives like Ripple’s legal lead, Stuart Alderoty, said this week that progress was being made with the bill in the latest talks.

Stock tied to Bitcoin price

Coinbase’s drop in revenue came as crypto markets took a hit in the last quarter of 2025. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other major coins erased gains they had made off the back of US president Donald Trump’s victory following a huge selloff.

The two biggest digital assets are now well below their 2025 records and have been further hurt following a selloff last week.

Bitcoin is nearly 50% below its October record; Ethereum has dropped by more than 60%.

“Crypto is cyclical, and experience tells us it’s never as good, or as bad as it seems,” Coinbase said in a release.

‘The world onchain’

Coinbase last year announced it would debut stock market trading and prediction markets in its bid to become a “super app” and “everything exchange.”

Tokenised stocks are now available on the app, and soon, according to Coinbase executives, 10,000 tickers will be available on the platform.

The move, according to Armstrong, is “to bring the world onchain.”

“For customers, the ideal experience is to have access to every investment and trading product that they want in one trusted place, wherever their assets reside,” Armstrong said during the earnings call.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

In a long-awaited move, Aave Labs proposed on Thursday directing all of its revenue from Aave-branded products to Aave DAO, the digital cooperative that manages DeFi’s top eponymous lending protocol.

Labs also proposed “ratifying” a forthcoming version of the protocol, Aave v4, as the “core technical foundation for future development.”

The proposal is intended to settle a long-running dispute over control of the protocol, the largest in decentralised finance with more than $26 billion in user deposits.

It is meant to be decentralised, with control spread across members of the DAO — the hundreds of thousands of people who own the Aave token — rather than concentrated in its creator, Stani Kulechov, or the company he runs.

But influential members within the DAO chafed at Labs’ influence over the protocol. That tension boiled over in December, when it was revealed that Labs had stopped sharing revenue from the Aave website, which connects users to the protocol.

A very public spat played out in Aave’s governance forum and on social media. Some members of the DAO wanted Labs to relinquish the Aave brand, and one accused it of executing a “slow-motion coup.”

In addition to sharing certain revenue with the DAO and centering v4 as the DAO’s focus moving forward, Thursday’s proposal would have the DAO allocate $25 million to Labs for ongoing product development and authorise the creation of an affiliated foundation that would be responsible for defending Aave trademarks.

“The framework formalizes Aave Labs’ role as a long-term contributor to the Aave DAO under a token-centric model, with 100% of product revenue directed to the DAO,” Kulechov said in a statement.

“As onchain finance enters a decisive new phase, with fintechs and institutions entering DeFi, this framework positions Aave to capture major growth markets and win over the next decade.”

While members of the DAO might welcome the revenue sharing proposal, it is unclear how they might respond to its other components. Some members have resisted Labs’ push to sideline Aave v3, for example.

Marc Zeller, head of Aave Chan Initiative, a delegate within the DAO, criticised the proposal over Labs’ failure to consult with delegates.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

Russia wants to move yet further away from the US dollar, and plans to use its central bank digital currency, the digital ruble, to trade with its BRICS partners.

As Washington-Moscow relations remain frosty amid talk of possible further sanctions on Russia, BRICS central bankers are looking for more ways to trade outside the US-dominated global financial system.

“The digital ruble is first and foremost an international project,” said Timur Aitov, a member of the Russian Chamber of Commerce, chair of the Financial Market Security Committee, in an interview with Russian media outlet Plus World.

China, Russia’s closest trading partner, is also moving away from dollar-denominated trade at an increasingly rapid speed. Its central bank recently included cross-border digital yuan adoption in the Communist Party’s 15th five-year plan.

BRICS alignment plans

Aitov said there was a lack of domestic demand for a Russian CBDC. He said he agreed with CBDC-sceptical comments made last year by German Gref, the CEO of Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank.

“I don’t understand why an individual needs the option to use a CBDC,” Gref said in July. “And neither do banks or businesses. I still don’t really understand why we need the [digital ruble].”

But Aitov said BRICS countries need CBDCs to trade with one another, which is why the Russian central bank is targeting a September 1 rollout for the digital ruble.

He noted that the Reserve Bank of India has recommended including a proposal to link BRICS nations’ CBDCs on the agenda of the upcoming BRICS summit in New Delhi.

The Indian central bank reportedly thinks its plan will help facilitate cross-border trade and tourism payments.

“This is the first time such a proposal for a unified system has been formally submitted for consideration within BRICS,” said Aitov. “If it’s approved, the digital currencies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa will unite, using a shared infrastructure and unified regulatory standards.”

Aitov added that Russian commercial banks would prefer to use ruble-pegged stablecoins.

But BRICS central bankers say they largely oppose using stablecoin-powered solutions.

“Stablecoins raise significant concerns for monetary stability, fiscal policy, banking intermediation, and systemic resilience,” the Indian central bank’s Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar said in December.

His comments closely echo remarks made by the Russian central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina in October.

When asked about her stance on stablecoin issuance in Russia, Nabiullina said she had no objection to such coins being used in cross-border trade, but ruled out stablecoins’ use in domestic scenarios.

Combating fraud

Aitov did, however, say that the digital ruble rollout would have some significant positive benefits for domestic users: namely, when it comes to battling corruption and fighting fraud.

“Officials could be monitored, because it will be clear who has stolen digital rubles and from where,” he said. “Citizens will also be happy — particularly those who have lost their digital rubles to fraudsters.”

Earlier this month, Anatoly Aksakov, head of the State Duma’s Committee on Financial Markets and the chief architect of Russia’s crypto legislation, predicted the eventual “demise” of Bitcoin.

“By all the fundamental laws of economics, [cryptocurrencies] are bound to collapse sooner or later,” he said

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Bitcoin investors better brace for “more pain” as the price of the top cryptocurrency is set to plunge to $50,000 or even lower over the next few months, according to Standard Chartered.

The British bank’s global head of digital assets research, Geoffrey Kendrick, offered that forecast in a Thursday note to investors shared with DL News.

“We are going to see more pain and a final capitulation period for digital asset prices in the next few months,” Kendrick wrote.

Not only did he forecast that Bitcoin would plunge 26% to $50,000, but said Ethereum is set to shed almost 30% of its current value and drop to $1,400 over the next few months.

Standard Chartered also lowered its expectations for where the top cryptocurrencies will end the year, saying Bitcoin will finish the year at $100,000 and Ethereum at $4,000. Kendrick previously said they’d finish 2026 at $150,000 and $7,500, respectively.

Bitcoin and Ethereum hit all-time highs of $126,080 and $4,946, respectively, in 2025.

Market bloodbath

Kendrick’s pessimistic outlook echoes the sentiment of other industry watchers across the cryptosphere who’ve observed the market bloodbath that have bled $2 trillion, or about half, of the total cryptocurrency market’s value since October.

Still, Kendrick said things will get worse due to investors in Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded funds not buying the dip, but opting to sell instead.

He added that the “macro risk backdrop is also becoming more challenging”, and that traders have already priced in two interest rate cuts until June, when the new Federal Reserve chief takes over.

Crypto markets have typically performed well in a low-interest rate environment. US President Donald Trump in January chose Kevin Warsh to chair the Federal Reserve in place of Jerome Powell.

Warsh has argued for lower interest rates last year but economists are split over how he will behave when he becomes the central bank’s chief.

His confirmation hearing is yet to be scheduled.

The good news

To be sure, Kendrick argued that crypto as an asset class was becoming “more resilient”, and selloffs would be less painful than previous cycles.

The collapse of decentralised finance protocol Terra and subsequent crash of crypto exchange FTX in 2022 caused Bitcoin to drop from its 2021 record of $69,000 to under $16,000 — a nearly 80% drop.

Even if Bitcoin’s price falls to $50,000, it would only have lost 60% of its value since reaching its record high in October.

Every cloud has a silver lining, right?

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.