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The U.S. Department of Justice will drop part of one count of its case against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm due to a recent policy memo, the agency said Thursday.

The DOJ will not go to trial on a charge alleging Storm failed to comply with money transmitter business registration rules, but still plans to go to trial in July over allegations he knowingly transmitted funds tied to crimes, conspired to commit money laundering and conspired to violate sanctions law, the DOJ said in a letter filed to the judge overseeing its case.

"The Government writes to update the Court regarding this case, which is scheduled for trial on July 14, 2025," the letter said. "After review of this case, this Office and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General have determined that this prosecution is consistent with the letter and spirit of the April 7, 2025 Memorandum from the Deputy Attorney General."

The April 7 memo, authored by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, directed prosecutors not to pursue cases where regulations may be unclear, or did not meet certain criteria, specifically saying the DOJ should end "regulation by prosecution." Prosecutors in another case against the developers of crypto mixer Samourai Wallet have already asked a judge overseeing that case to pause it while they consider the memo.

In a statement, Brian Klein of Waymaker LLP told CoinDesk that his firm, which represents Storm, believes "that this case should never have been brought."

"Its dismissal would be consistent with the policies of the Trump Administration and the principles outlined by the Department of Justice in its recent cryptocurrency guidance memo," he said. "Roman’s prosecution is a threat to the entire crypto industry and the interests of justice will be best served by its swift dismissal. We will not cease to fight for Roman and that result."

Klein spoke at CoinDesk's Consensus 2025 conference in Toronto on Wednesday, where he also shared his view that the case should not have been brought.

"One of the defenses we've raised, which is recognized in the U.S., is that coding — literally typing out code — you are given free speech protections for coding," he said. "It's just as if you wrote a book or you did some other type of expressive activity."

“I don’t think it’s here to stay,” Dave Portnoy said, referring to meme coins—the same corner of crypto he’s often poured fuel on through his social media antics.

Speaking on stage at Consensus 2025 with Tom Farley, CEO of crypto exchange Bullish, the Barstool Sports founder peeled back the layers of his short, chaotic stint in the meme coin world. With his usual brash candor, Portnoy described a journey of sudden windfalls, legal landmines, and the kind of public backlash that might make even the most hardened internet provocateur think twice.

“I love the rush, I’m a gambler at heart,” he admitted. “But then the smart part of me is like, is it worth the hate?” The conversation was part of a broader discussion about crypto’s culture of speculation and hype, where meme coins — tokens created more for jokes than utility — have captured the imagination of young, risk-hungry traders. Portnoy, who built Barstool into a media empire on viral content and sports gambling, found himself swept into the same digital fever.

It started with SafeMoon, one of the earliest viral tokens of the COVID-era crypto boom. Portnoy saw social media posts about traders making “9,000,000,000%” gains, bought in, made a video mocking its lack of real value — and got sued anyway.

“They basically said SafeMoon paid me to promote them. Total lie. Cost me $20k to get out of the lawsuit.” he said.

Undeterred, he pushed further. Inspired by the idea of launching a Barstool coin and skipping the hassle of going public, Portnoy began researching how meme coins are made. That led him to a developer who pitched a token called Libra, allegedly backed by the president of Argentina.

Portnoy bought $4.5 million worth.

“I was at SNL with Lady Gaga. I was just typing. I'm like, what the hell is going on here?” he said. The developer had told him Elon Musk would tweet about it. Instead, the president disavowed any involvement. “I lost all my money.”

Portnoy says he got lucky — the developer later reimbursed him in full, though he isn’t sure why. “I'm one of the lucky ones, but you know, I'm not going to not take that money back.”

Despite the losses, Portnoy kept dabbling. He launched coins called Greed and Greed 2, leaning into the satire. Another coin, JailStool, emerged from public outrage at his meme coin experiments. Someone else created the token, but Portnoy embraced the name and posted about it. At one point, he claims, a $1,000 investment ballooned to $7 million — within an hour.

“It took me 13 years to make that kind of money at Barstool,” he said.

But what goes up almost always crashes back down. Portnoy says he’s lost track of how many times he’s been accused of “rug pulls,” a term for when insiders dump a coin and leave latecomers with worthless tokens.

He described meme coins as a rigged game, dominated by a core group of early buyers with trading bots and algorithms who know when to exit. “It's the same group of winners and it's the same group of losers.”

That realization seems to have changed his appetite. While he teased the possible launch of Greed 3, he admitted the backlash is harder to stomach in real life. One man confronted him in a Las Vegas casino, claiming he lost $200,000. “It’s all fun and games behind the computer but that reinforces people are losing and making real money, and they're not always taking responsibility for the risk, even though I think they should.”

Despite the money and the memes, he says the meme coin scene is ultimately unsustainable.

“I get why people like it,” he said. “It’s a form of gambling, it’s a Ponzi scheme, I don’t mean that in a negative way.”

Portnoy doesn’t claim to have the answers. But if he’s a weathervane for where meme coin mania might be heading, the forecast looks grim. “I can't imagine it's here to stay. I think it's here to stay for the next four years. What happens after that? I don't know.”

The crypto rally took a long-overdue pause on Thursday as traders took some profits following weeks of relentless advance that lifted bitcoin BTC close to record prices.

The consolidation occurred amid a slew of U.S. economic data releases. April retail sales missed expectations, producer prices rose less than forecast, jobless claims stayed on track, while the NY Empire State Manufacturing Index and Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Survey showed softening business activity—signals that did little to rattle traditional markets. The S&P 500 added 0.4%, while the Nasdaq finished flat.

Bitcoin pulled back to $101,000 early in the U.S. session before rebounding above $103,000 later, modestly down over the past 24 hours.

Altcoins fared worse with the broad-market CoinDesk 20 Index declining 3% during the same period. Native tokens of Aptos APT, Avalanche AVAX and Uniswap UNI tumbled 6%-7%.

Crypto investors shouldn't sweat today's pullback, analysts told CoinDesk.

"The current pullback appears to be a correction within a broader medium-term uptrend," said Ruslan Lienkha, chief of markets at YouHodler.

The upward momentum in equity markets moderated after the China-U.S. tariff delay, and short-term traders began locking in profits, he said. "This shift in sentiment has spilled over into riskier assets, including BTC."

"Anything below 5% [price move] can often be considered just market noise," said Kirill Kretov, trading automation expert at CoinPanel. "Some of this movement likely comes from profit-taking, as traders secure gains after the recent rally. With liquidity so thin, even modest sell-offs can quickly translate into noticeable corrections."

Backing away from short-term movements, the broader price action seems healthy with no clear signs of an imminent top.

Vetle Lunde, senior analyst at K33 Research, said BTC just exited one of its longest periods of below-neutral funding rates, a signal of defensive positioning

"This resembles the risk-averse patterns from October 2023 and 2024 and is far from resembling price action near past local market peaks," wrote Lunde, who was optimistic that the lack of froth with BTC above $100,000 BTC paves the way for potential fresh record highs.

According to Steno Research, crypto tailwinds stem from a stealth expansion in private credit—especially in the U.S. and Europe. In past bull runs, crypto thrived on base money expansion: massive injections of reserves by central banks that fueled asset inflation across the board. This time, however, the balance sheets of the Fed and European Central Bank have continued shrinking through quantitative tightening.

“Many have pointed to China’s liquidity injections as the primary driver of the rally,” Samuel Shiffman wrote in a Thursday report. “But that misses the mark. The real support is coming from Western bank credit growth—a quieter, less visible engine behind this move.”

He said that forward-looking indicators project global financial conditions improving into the summer months, driven primarily by the U.S. dollar weakening. This has historically lead to higher BTC prices.

"We’ve likely got room through June and into early July before the picture begins to change," Shiffman said. "But once we approach the back half of July, the setup gets trickier. Our leading indicators suggest that the peak in financial easing might not last past August."

Banks need to be part of crypto for stablecoins to succeed—that was the message from Jose Fernandez da Ponte, PayPal’s senior vice president of digital currencies, during a panel discussion at Consensus 2025 in Toronto.

"It might sound counterintuitive, but you do want the banks in this space," Fernandez da Ponte said, adding that their infrastructure—from custody to providing fiat rails—will be essential if stablecoins are to scale beyond crypto-native circles. "You want that connectivity and that fabric to work."

His remarks came amid efforts to bring regulatory clarity for digital assets in the U.S., with lawmakers inching closer to pass stablecoin legislation that could redefine the market and allow banks to enter the space.

Read more: U.S. Senate's Stablecoin Push Still Alive as Bill May Return to Floor: Sources

"This is going to be a big unlock," said Anthony Soohoo, chairman and CEO of MoneyGram, a cross-border money transfer service. "There’s always hesitation: Can I trust this? [The stablecoin legislation] is going to answer a lot of those questions."

Both executives said they expect a wave of new issuers to enter the market once regulation is in place, followed by a period of consolidation. “It’s not going to be 300 stablecoins, and it’s not going to be just two,” Fernandez da Ponte said.

Currently, Tether's USDT USDT and Circle's USDC USDC dominate the market, representing nearly 90% of the $230 billion asset class. PayPal’s PYUSD PYUSD, launched in 2023, lags far behind with $900 million supply. Fernandez da Ponte pushed back on market cap as the primary metric for success. "We look at velocity, active wallets, number of transactions,” he said. “Those are what drive real usage."

In countries with high inflation and volatile currencies, consumers are seeking out dollar-backed stablecoins as stores of value and tools for cross-border payments. Soohoo said MoneyGram, which operates in over 200 countries with nearly half a million cash-access locations, is helping facilitate that access.

"We see ourselves between physical finance and digital finance," Soohoo said. "A lot of consumers in local economies want to hold value in dollars but still need to access it as cash to spend in places that don’t take digital currency."

Stablecoin adoption in developed countries, meanwhile, has been slower. With clear regulation in place, stablecoins can streamline corporate treasury operations and cross-border disbursement, Fernandez da Ponte noted.

"We used to have this mad rush on Friday to make sure money was in the right places before the weekend," he said. "Now we’re sending money to the Philippines and Africa in ten minutes with stablecoins."

Both executives noted that real-world use cases, not hype, will determine if stablecoins could reach the trillion-dollar scale in the next years that's been projected.

"Consumers don’t care about stablecoins. They care about solving problems." Fernandez da Ponte said. "We’re five years into a ten-year journey, and regulation will define the next half."

The global head of policy at TRM Labs, a blockchain analytics firm that helps law enforcement investigate crypto fraud, shared that he believes Coinbase’s handling of the latest hack is a “really great example to other businesses in terms of how to handle” dealing with hacks of exchanges.

At a panel at Consensus 2025, Ari Redbord discussed how easy it is for hacks to happen on crypto exchanges, as the industry is “the perfect storm of weak cyber controls and ultimately it's a good target.”

Coinbase shared earlier on Thursday that some of its staff had been bribed to steal their customers' data, and its founder Brian Armstrong had received a ransome note for $20 million dollars in bitcoin.

The team shared in a blog post that because of the breach, it could pay up to $400 million in remediation costs to affected customers, and that they were setting up a $20 million bounty on any information related to the attackers instead.

The news comes as the industry has experienced other major hacks, like Bybit which was hacked earlier this year for $1.5 billion, and defunct crypto exchange FTX in November 2022 for $400 million.

Though these episodes seem to happen frequently, Redbord believes more regulatory involvement can alleviate some of these issues. “There's a lot we can do with governments in order to go after these bad actors that have nothing to do with crypto or blockchain intelligence,” he said. “We have cyber facilities.”

Read more: Coinbase Could Pay Customers Up to $400M for Data Breach

The latest draft of the U.S. Senate's stablecoin legislation includes enough changes that Democratic senators may now have an easier time getting back on board, though consumer advocates say it still falls short.

The bill to set oversight and standards for stablecoin issuers sailed through the Senate Banking Committee with wide bipartisan support in March, but it hit a wall on the Senate floor last week as many Democrats raised objections. Chief among them were the conflicts that may be presented by President Donald Trump's own crypto interests and the possibility that big technology firms like Meta and social-media site X may be able to issue such tokens.

"As the result of hard-fought negotiations, Democrats won major victories on a range of critical issues," proponents noted in a summary circulated with the draft bill. The question remaining is: Will it be enough to get back to a so-called cloture vote that will advance the bill to a floor debate that would mark its final major stage before the Senate takes a vote.

The next procedural move on the Senate floor could come by next week, according to people familiar with the talks.

The latest changes to the bill represent a mixed bag. The loudest requests from critics, that the president be explicitly stopped from personally benefiting from the crypto industry that his administration will regulate, were not directly addressed in this version of the bill.

But on the concerns over tech giants sprouting with a field of new dollar-based tokens, the bill dealt with it in part:

"A public company that is not predominantly engaged in one or more financial activities, and its wholly or majority owned subsidiaries or affiliates, may not issue a payment stablecoin unless the public company obtains a unanimous vote of the Stablecoin Certification Review Committee," according to the latest draft. The committee would be a multi-agency group created under the legislation to look at such requests.

There are major loopholes in that, according to Mark Hays, who focuses on crypto and financial-technology issues for Americans for Financial Reform and Demand Progress. For starters, he said, it affects only public companies and not private ones, such as X and TiKTok.

"There's already a way that large tech firms that aren't public could become issuers without adhering to these new standards," he said. Also, he added, "it's quite possible under this bill that a public company could secure an interest in a non-public company, and that's another way around it."

He argued that this overall draft gave toothless answers to the concern of consumer advocates.

"Pushing this through on an arbitrary deadline because the crypto industry is breathing down your neck is not a good way to make policy," Hays said. "And it's especially bad when that policy could further enable and enrich the president."

Bo Hines, one of Trump's chief advisers on crypto, appeared at Consensus 2025 in Toronto on Wednesday to insist that there's no conflict in the president's business interests or his family's involvement in the industry, including its stake in World Liberty Financial. He said that Trump "can't be bought."

The White House's Hines, who acts as a liaison to Capitol Hill during the legislative negotiations, expressed continued confidence about the effort staying on track in the Senate.

"Negotiations are ongoing," Hines said at Consensus. "But I remain steadfast in my optimism that we're going to achieve — the president's desire is to do it — both stablecoin legislation and market structure legislation before the August recess."

The SEC has been investigating crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) over whether it misstated its user numbers in past securities filings and marketing materials.

The probe began under the former presidential administration while the SEC was still under the control of then-Chair Gary Gensler, according to the NYT, which first reported the story, but has persisted under the SEC’s current, crypto-friendly leadership.

The metric at the heart of the investigation is Coinbase’s claim to have over 100 million “verified users.” It stopped using the metric in both disclosure and marketing materials in 2021, the year it went public on the Nasdaq.

Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, told CoinDesk in an emailed statement that the SEC’s investigation is a “hold-over investigation from the prior administration about a metric we stopped reporting two and a half years ago, which was fully disclosed to the public.”

“We explained that the verified users metric includes anyone who verified their email address or phone number with us, so it may overstate the number of unique customers," said Grewal "We also disclosed – and continue to disclose – the more relevant metric of ‘monthly transacting users’ – the number of people who use our platform in a given month."

“While we strongly believe this investigation should not continue, we remain committed to working with the SEC to bring this matter to a close,” Grewal added.

The SEC did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment by press time.

Already under pressure due to today's disclosure of a data breach, COIN shares dipped a bit further on this SEC news, now down 6.6% on the session.

TORONTO —Eric Trump, the son of U.S. President Donald Trump, said he believes bitcoin is digital gold and called the largest digital currency a store of value, during a packed panel at Consensus 2025 in Toronto.

"I really believe in digital gold, which is bitcoin, right? I believe in the store of value," Trump said.

However, Eric Trump — who has a background in real estate — told the crowd at CoinDesk's Consensus 2025 conference in Toronto that he didn't get into bitcoin or crypto until politics intertwined the Trump family and the crypto community.

"It wasn't until the very same group that was attacking my family for no reason whatsoever other than political beliefs, started attacking [the] crypto community that it really drove two people who might not have always been like-minded together and that partnership has been absolutely amazing," he said Thursday.

Aside from politics, he also realized real estate is not as liquid as bitcoin, which has better liquidity and was easier to transact, solidifying his belief in the digital currency. "I also realized, kind of, through some of that political weaponization, you know, some of the limitations of real estate. Real estate has created tremendous wealth for our family. At the same time, real estate can't be transferred. It's very hard to sell," he said.

"I sold a hotel two years ago. It took me a year and a half to literally transact that hotel because you have title reports and you have managers that have to go in, and you have best proliferations. You do all sorts of things," Trump said. "... You constantly have to manage it. You constantly have to watch operations, right? And then all of a sudden, you've got this kind of digital asset which you don't need to watch, you don't need to manage. You know, it's easy to transact on."

Trump is the co-founder and chief strategy officer of American Bitcoin, a Bitcoin mining firm founded in partnership with Hut 8 and slated to go public via a merger with Gryphon Digital Mining (GRYP).

The Gryphon partnership came about from a desire to take the American Bitcoin partnership public as quickly as possible, said Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot on stage alongside Trump to a standing-room only crowd. An existing mining business was a key part of that plan as well as getting 'American' and 'bitcoin' as part of the company name.

"American Bitcoin, to me, is everything, you know. And I we came up with the name, I said one thing. I said, Listen, it has to have the word American, and it has to have the word Bitcoin in it," Trump said.

The cryptocurrency market is experiencing significant fluctuations as global economic factors and regulatory developments create both challenges and opportunities. Litecoin's recent price action reflects this broader market sentiment, with the cryptocurrency encountering strong resistance at $101.65 after reaching a peak of $101.90. Despite the subsequent correction to the $95-$96 range, LTC has shown resilience with support emerging around $95.82.

Market analysts point to the recent US-China tariff agreement as a key driver behind Litecoin's price movements, with the cryptocurrency gaining bullish momentum following the deal announcement. Additionally, Federal Reserve policy decisions have contributed to positive sentiment in risk assets, helping LTC maintain its position above critical support levels despite the correction.

In the regulatory landscape, the SEC has delayed decisions on spot ETF applications for several cryptocurrencies including Litecoin, creating uncertainty but also anticipation. Despite these delays, betting markets show ~80% probability for approval before year-end, suggesting continued optimism among investors. This regulatory environment, combined with increasing institutional adoption and cross-border transaction utility, positions Litecoin as a significant player in the evolving cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Technical Analysis Highlights

• Litecoin fell from a high of $101.90 to a low of $95.73, representing a 6.05% decline over 24 hours.
• Strong resistance established at $101.65 level where price repeatedly failed to break through.
• Support emerged around $95.82 with substantial buying volume (304,377 units).
• Potential double bottom formation identified near the lows.
• Trading range of $5.87 (5.76%) indicates heightened volatility.
• Price currently consolidating near $96.94, suggesting possible stabilization.
• Remains vulnerable to further downside pressure if $96.24 support fails.

This technical analysis was conducted according to CoinDesk s research model analysing CoinDesk Data

Disclaimer: This article was generated with AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy. This article may include information from external sources, which are listed below when applicable.

1. Bitzo, Chainlink Surges 125% Amid Massive Whale Activity – Is Litecoin the Next to Ignite?, published May 15, 2025.
2. Bitzo, Falling Wedge Breakout Ignites Momentum for XRP, With Solana’s DeFi Activity Rising – Is a Bigger Rally Ahead for SOL?, published May 14, 2025.
3. Bitcoin Sistemi, XRP’s 9800% Rally Was Just the Beginning – Now Solana, Litecoin, and Ethereum Are Set to Run Again, published May 14, 2025.
4. Bitcoin Sistemi, Can $1000 in Litecoin or XRP Match Ethereum and Solana’s Climb? Analysts Predict One Will Lead, published May 14, 2025.
5. Crypto Daily, Top Altcoins This Week: Litecoin, Dogecoin, and UniLabs Dominate Interest with 60% Volume Surge, published May 14, 2025.

Ethereum co-founder Anthony Di Iorio shared Thursday that he thinks the blockchain wasn’t necessarily meant to be a “competitor to Bitcoin,” but rather “it was meant to be an alternative.”

Speaking to a crowd at Consensus 2025, Di Iorio shared with the audience about his time during Ethereum’s early days, noting back then that he understood that the project could become a really big movement. “We could sense and feel that it was picking up,” Di Iorio said.

Di Iorio was one of the eight co-founders of the Ethereum blockchain, but originally got into cryptocurrency through his advocacy with Bitcoin. He started Bitcoin meetups in Toronto in 2012, and through that met Vitalik Buterin, who came up with the Ethereum whitepaper and shared it with his fellow co-founders.

While Di Iorio is still a big Bitcoin proponent, he has said that “I do think eventually Ethereum has a possibility of overtaking it in terms of market capitalization.”

“With the amount of use cases, and the value that Ethereum is allowing to be created, I think it has that opportunity, in order to possibly overtake it,” Di Iorio added.

After stepping away from the Ethereum Foundation, Anthony Di Iorio founded Decentral in 2014, which is best known for creating the Jaxx Liberty crypto wallet. In 2022, he launched Andiami, a project blending hardware, tokenomics, and game theory to tackle centralization vectors within decentralized networks.

Read more: Ethereum Co-Founder Di Iorio Unveils Project to Bring Blockchain Computers to a Wider Audience