OneBitco - News

May 16, 2025 22:37

Despite recent setbacks, U.S. legislation to regulate stablecoin issuers may be heading toward debate and passage next week, according to the backers of the bill known as the "Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins" (GENIUS) Act.

“Next week, the Senate will make history when we debate and pass the GENIUS Act that establishes the first ever pro-growth regulatory framework for payment stablecoins,” said Senator Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican who sponsored the bill to set U.S. standards for stablecoins, which are typically dollar-based tokens such as Circle's USDC and Tether's USDT that are vital to crypto trading activity.

The latest draft of the bill began circulating this week, and a copy seen by CoinDesk showed language had been adjusted in modest ways to help satisfy Democrats concerned with consumer protection and national security elements. In one addition, the bill insisted the big public companies such as Meta wouldn't be approved as issuers of the tokens, though consumer advocates cautioned that private companies such as Elon Musk's social media site X would be eligible.

Hagerty paired his statement with one from Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the New York Democrat who has also pushed this legislation. Her sentiment carried what may have been a shade less confidence about the outcome, and the two lawmakers have ample reason to put a strong public face on a negotiation that's faced headwinds.

“Stablecoins are already playing an important role in the global economy, and it is essential that the U.S. enact legislation that protects consumers, while also enabling responsible innovations,” Gillibrand said in the statement, contending that "robust consumer protections" are included in the latest version. “The crafting of this bill has been a true bipartisan effort, and I’m optimistic we can pass it in the coming days.”

The Senate has experienced considerable volatility on the bill in the past two weeks, with its recent failure to clear a so-called cloture vote that would have moved it forward into a formal debate. It's headed toward a second vote on Monday in which it needs 60 votes to advance, which would need to include several Democrats. The Senate would then have some time to continue debating the language and possibly make changes before moving on to actually passing the bill.

Democrats had been critical of its potential for abuse and for stablecoin involvement from corporate giants, but the biggest stink has been raised around President Donald Trump's own interest in crypto businesses, including World Liberty Financial's stablecoin play.

A previous version of the bill had easily advanced out of the Senate Banking Committee with a bipartisan vote before some of the same Democrats that approved it later raised objections. But the Senate has more crypto-friendly Democrats in this session than the last, when the Senate Banking Committee denied any progress for crypto bills.

The House of Representatives is also working on its own version, which would have to be melded with the Senate's before Trump could sign the new standards into law. Representative French Hill, the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, acknowledged at Consensus 2025 in Toronto that Trump's crypto involvement has added friction to the lawmakers' negotiations.

May 16, 2025 20:03

Blockchain development platform Alchemy said it has acquired Solana developer DexterLab for an undisclosed fee.

The acquisition will accelerate the development of Solana-based Web3 applications to meet growing enterprise demand, Alchemy said in an emailed announcement on Friday.

DexterLab's technology has previously powered the Solana development of Google and the Solana Foundation, establishing itself as "a go-to infrastructure provider," according to Alchemy's announcement.

One of Alchemy's aims in acquiring DexterLab is to consolidate Solana development alongside that of Ethereum to reduce complexity for projects building across multiple networks.

Alchemy may be be attempting to capture the growing prominence of Solana as a preferred venue for blockchain applications.

While Ethereum remains comfortably the larger blockchain in terms of total-value locked, there are some metrics where Solana can claim the ascendancy. For example, active addresses on Solana have been over 210 million in the last three months while Ethereum and Ethereum Layer-2 addresses are just below 80 million. Transactions on Solana have also outnumbered Ethereum: 4.75 billion to 1 billion.

May 16, 2025 19:29

“There’s a famous saying that sometimes the enemy of your enemy is actually your best friend,” Eric Trump told the crowd at Consensus in Toronto, Canada. “That was the Trumps with the crypto community. And I think the banks made the biggest mistake of their lives.”

The son of U.S. President Donald Trump and co-founder of bitcoin BTC mining company American Bitcoin is also an adviser to World Liberty Financial (WLF), which recently launched a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, USD1, that has already reached $2 billion in market capitalization.

Co-founders of WLF joined Trump on stage on Friday as they announced that USD1 was now operable across multiple blockchains through Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP).

Trump painted a vivid picture of personal grievance turned into ideological conviction, claiming he was “canceled” by major financial institutions for his political views which then got him interested in crypto as a shield against financial gatekeeping.

“So many of the banks have been weaponized and I was case in point,” said the son of the U.S. president. “I was probably the most canceled person for doing absolutely nothing wrong, only because we had a political view, and a political view that might not have been popular with some of the big financial institutions and guys, they came after me like I was a dog.”

USD1, he said, is a patriotic financial tool for people in unstable or corrupt regimes.

“It gives so much freedom of financial choice, especially to markets and countries where people have never had any kind of financial freedom, had never had any kind of financial independence, might be in a country where it's war torn, where it's subject to corruption, it's subject to ridiculous inflation,” he said. “Every single day they go to work and their money is being burned under their mattress, and all of a sudden, we give the world the ability to be on the US dollar backed one to one by US Treasuries.”

Earlier today, lawyers representing WLF pushed back against scrutiny from U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, the leading Democrat on a panel responsible for investigating corruption and mismanagement, who had asked about the ownership and investment structure for Trump-affiliated entities, including WLFI, in a letter last week.

May 16, 2025 19:15

While cryptocurrencies put in a flattish performance on Friday with bitcoin BTC churning around $104,000, crypto-related stocks were having a moment to shine.

Crypto mining and data center firms such as Cipher Mining (CIFR), Hive Digital (HIVE), Hut 8 (HUT) and TeraWulf (WULF) booked 10%-20% gains on optimism about artificial intelligence (AI) computing demand, jolted by CoreWeave (CRWV) signing a $4 billion deal with ChatGPT-developer OpenAI. These firms are often seen as proxies for AI-linked infrastructure bets due to their data center assets.

For its part, CoreWeave soared more than 26%.

The rally extended to Galaxy Digital (GLXY), which rose 8% on its first day of trading on the Nasdaq, marking the firm’s long-awaited U.S. market debut. The company, previously only listed in Toronto, manages crypto investments and trades digital assets and also has a data center business.

Crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) rebounded 9% after a sharp drop Thursday triggered by customer data breach and ongoing regulatory scrutiny by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

DeFi Development (DFDV), the real estate tech firm with a Solana SOL treasury strategy, surged 45% to fresh record highs on news of striking a validator operation deal with memecoin BONK BONK and adding more SOL tokens to its balance sheet.

Meanwhile, BTC held just above $104,000, up 1.3% over the 24 hours, while ether ETH gained 2.3% to $2,580. The broad-market CoinDesk 20 Index was flat, with XRP XRP underperforming as a U.S. judge rejected the settlement proposal between Ripple and the SEC.

Inflation expectations through the roof

On the macro front, the University of Michigan’s latest inflation survey showed consumers expect 1-year inflation to rise to 7.3%, up from 6.5%, the highest since the 1980s, while expectations for 5-10 years ticked up to 4.6%, a multi-decade high.

"It's so high it doesn't make sense," Louis Navellier, chief investment officer of money management firm Navellier said in a market note.

Responses showed staggering divergence in outlooks by political affiliations, with the Republican outlook for far tamer inflation. Traditional markets, consequently, shrugged off the data, with major U.S. stock indices climbing higher towards the latter hours of the session.

However, rising inflation expectations may have a second-order impact on markets by discouraging Fed policymakers from cutting rates in the next months.

"The concern here is that the Fed has expressed interest in consumer expectations on inflation, and with their concern about the potential of tariff-fueled inflation, it may give them further reason to pause," Navellier said.

May 16, 2025 19:01

TORONTO — Ethereum just completed its most significant upgrade in more than a year, but the milestone comes after a turbulent stretch for the blockchain. The price of ether (ETH) has declined, developers have migrated to rival platforms, and the Ethereum Foundation — a nonprofit steward of the project — has faced criticism for a lack of coordination and vision.

Speaking on a panel at CoinDesk’s Consensus conference in Toronto, Paul Brody — global blockchain leader at EY and chairman of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance — and Josh Stark of the Ethereum Foundation, offered a more optimistic view of the road ahead.

There are two things the community is looking for, Stark said. First, “the ecosystem needs stronger leadership … Stronger leadership on the roadmap, on executing that roadmap, and really help coordinating the ecosystem to tackle the big challenges.”

Second, the network needs better messaging. “Ethereum's fundamentals are incredibly strong, but few people are standing up to tell the story of that ecosystem and to boost the incredible stuff being built,” Stark said.

For all its recent struggles, Stark and Brody maintained that Ethereum remains the most innovative and forward-focused project in crypto.

Brody suggested that concerns about the foundation’s leadership are particularly overblown, giving the Ethereum Foundation’s former executive director, Aya Miyaguchi, top marks for her tenure, which began in 2018 and ended this year.

“Ethereum is a proof-of-stake chain with more than 120 layer-2 networks,” said Broday. Network capacity, he added, is near "300 and 450 million transactions a day." Additionally, "transaction fees at the L2 level — they average under one penny per transaction for the last three months," said Brody. "If I step back and look at [Miyaguchi's] tenure very objectively in terms of the results, I would say A plus.”

Miyaguchi transitioned to Ethereum Foundation president in March 2025, installing Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak as its new co-executive directors — part of a leadership restructuring aimed at enhancing the foundation's strategic focus.

Some critics have argued Ethereum’s roadmap has relied too heavily on layer-2 rollups — independent blockchains that process transactions cheaply and quickly before "settling" their history on Ethereum’s main chain. Brody defended the network's rollup-centric roadmap: “I'm delighted,” he said.

While layer-2s like Optimism, Arbitrum and Coinbase's Base network have lowered users' fees — generally considered the main headwind to wider network adoption — skeptics say they also introduce new security risks and fragmentation hurdles that threaten Ethereum's fundamental value proposition.

“Ethereum is being Ethereum,” Brody said. “Which is, identify a problem, fix it, and move on to the next problem. In terms of the biggest problem that we were dealing with over the last few years, it was scale, right? Going from being able to do a million transactions a day to 450 million network capacity is great.”

“All ecosystems are going to end up with something like an L2 roadmap with modularity and specialization,” Stark added. “We're just the ones that have gone furthest down this path, and we found the twists and the turns and the challenges on that road, and we're dealing with them.”

Ether (ETH), the network’s native token, has long been considered a blue-chip crypto asset. But in recent months, it has underperformed relative to some competitors. Network tokens are often viewed as a proxy for an ecosystem’s overall health.

Bitcoin, Stark noted, has successfully positioned itself as a reliable store of value, helping it weather the market more favorably than Ethereum. “Ethereum has a more complicated narrative,” he said.

Still, Stark expressed confidence that the market would eventually reflect Ethereum’s deeper value.

“The world's not going to stop learning about these technologies and these systems,” he said. “The world is going to have an appetite for a slightly more complicated, but just as real value proposition. And I think we're starting to see that now. So I think that markets eventually price value. And I think that Ethereum is the most important project in crypto and always has been.”

May 16, 2025 17:32

World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin is now operable across multiple blockchains through an integration with Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), the companies announced Friday.

That’s according to World Liberty Financial’s team, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov, and the son of U.S. President Donald Trump, Eric Trump, who announced the cross-chain capabilities at Consensus 2025.

USD1, a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin launched by the decentralized finance protocol inspired by Trump, has seen significant growth since its debut, reaching $2 billion in market capitalization. The stablecoin was used to close MGX’s $2 billion investment in Binance.

It still trails behind industry leaders Tether and Circle, whose leading stablecoins have a $151 billion and $60.6 billion market cap, respectively.

The token is backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries and fiat reserves held by BitGo Trust. The stablecoin was for now largely siloed within single blockchain ecosystems, yet the CCIP integration will allow it to move freely across blockchains.

Ethereum and BNB Chain are the first blockchains being integrated, though additional blockchain support is expected in the future. The integration, the firms say, tackles a long-standing hurdle in the stablecoin market: cross-chain security.

Historically, vulnerabilities in cross-chain bridges have cost users nearly $3 billion, they added.

“Chainlink's battle-tested infrastructure delivers the institutional-grade security and extensive reach needed to deliver USD1 into the hands of millions across a growing number of active, on-chain ecosystems,” said Zach Witkoff, co-founder of World Liberty Financial.

"Chainlink is absolutely critical to merging traditional finance and decentralized finance, which has been our mission at World Liberty Financial ever since the start," said World Liberty co-founder Zak Folkman. "We don't see a world where DeFi exists in its own ecosystem and traditional finance carries on but we believe in a very short amount of time that they will, in fact, merge and just be the future of finance. So to that end, World Liberty Financial, our USD1 token is now bridgeable across chain thanks to the incredible people at CCIP which have enabled this cross chain compatibility, currently."

The collaboration builds on an earlier integration where Chainlink’s price oracles were used to support World Liberty’s deployment of an Aave v3 instance.

May 16, 2025 17:31

Christy Goldsmith Romero, one of the four commissioners at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, will depart the federal regulator at the end of the month, she announced Friday.

Goldsmith Romero joins fellow Commissioner Summer Mersinger, who announced earlier this week that she would leave on May 30 after being named the next CEO of the Blockchain Association, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group for the crypto industry.

In a statement, Goldsmith Romero said that derivatives markets, which the agency oversees, "experienced significant growth while remaining resilient and financially stable through times of market stress and volatility" during her time on the Commission.

"I wish to also recognize the members of the CFTC Technology Advisory Committee, which I sponsored, for their landmark reports and public forums on future of finance issues," she said. "... Under my sponsorship, TAC released landmark reports on Responsible AI in Financial Markets and on Decentralized Finance, and sponsored public forums on AI, cybersecurity, blockchain, digital identity and digital assets."

Acting Chairman Caroline Pham is also set to leave soon, CoinDesk reported earlier this week. Pham has told people she would leave after former Commissioner Brian Quintenz, President Donald Trump's pick to lead the agency, is confirmed by the Senate.

Goldsmith Romero had previously announced her departure from the CFTC, also tying it to Quintenz's confirmation. However, the Senate Agriculture Committee has not yet scheduled a confirmation hearing for Quintenz. After that hearing, the committee would need to schedule a vote. Quintenz would then need to be confirmed by a majority of the full Senate, and only then would he be sworn in.

Goldsmith Romero's departure on May 31 will leave the CFTC with just two commissioners, and that number will likely remain static after Quintenz's confirmation until Trump nominates up to three more commissioners (two Republicans and a Democrat) to fill the empty seats.

May 16, 2025 16:56

Global economic uncertainties are weighing on cryptocurrency markets as TRX consolidates following its recent failed breakout attempt.

The token, which established a trading range between $0.271 and $0.278, has shown resilience despite mounting trade tensions between major economies.

Tron's blockchain continues to demonstrate strong fundamentals, processing over $1 billion in daily transaction volume while maintaining its position as the primary network for USDT circulation with over 70% market share.

Technical Analysis Highlights

TRX-USD established a 24-hour trading range of $0.271 to $0.278, representing a 2.95% spread.
A bullish breakout attempt occurred during the 05:00 hour with high volume (121.2M), reaching $0.278 but failed to sustain momentum.
Resistance zone formed around $0.277-$0.278, with support established at $0.271, tested twice with increasing volume.
Price action shows consolidation following rejection at resistance, with $0.273 sitting near the midpoint of the range.
Significant bullish momentum emerged in the last hour, breaking out of consolidation with a move from $0.271 to $0.272.
Notable reversal at 13:34 saw volume spike to 5.4M as TRX surged from $0.270 to $0.271.
Momentum accelerated between 13:55-14:00, with price reaching $0.272620, establishing a new resistance level.
Despite a brief pullback to $0.272052, strong buying pressure maintained support above $0.272.
The hour closed at $0.272442, representing a 0.5% gain from the opening.
Substantial volume increase during the breakout confirms strength of the upward move, suggesting potential continuation.

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.

External References

"Tron (TRX) and Mutuum Finance (MUTM) Target $0.60 In The Next 60 Days As TRX Price Crosses Key $0.25 Level", Cryptopolitan, published May 15, 2025.
"Tron Price Prediction 2025–2031: Will Tron reach $1?", Cryptopolitan, published May 16, 2025.

May 16, 2025 16:36

Nasdaq-listed DeFi Development Corp. (DFDV) jumped 30% on Friday to fresh record highs after unveiling a partnership with Solana’s top memecoin BONK and purchasing another batch of Solana's SOL SOL tokens.

The company said it will co-manage a Solana validator with BONK, claiming to be the first time a memecoin community and a public company sharing staking infrastructure on Solana, according to a press release. The cooperation also expands to integrate BONK's own liquid staking token, BONKSOL. Both parties will grow the validator’s stake and split the rewards.

"This validator partnership is a natural next step in BONK’s mission to empower our community and accelerate the adoption of Solana," said Nom, core contributor at BONK. "By teaming up with DeFi Dev Corp., we’re not only reinforcing the decentralized infrastructure of Solana but also creating a new standard for how community tokens can scale and sustain their ecosystems."

The announcement came one day after the firm bought another 16,447 SOL tokens, bringing its holdings to 609,190 SOL, worth around $107 million. The firm acquired the tokens for $2.3 million at an average price of $139.66, below spot prices. The company earlier shared plans to acquire locked-up tokens at a discount.

The company, formerly known as real estate tech platform Janover, is part of a growing roster of public firms putting digital assets on their balance sheet, taking a page of the Strategy's playbook centered around bitcoin BTC. DeFi Development pivoted to focus on Solana, stacking the network's native tokens and operating validators, after a group of former Kraken executives acquired a majority stake last month.

DFDV shares gained over 2,800% since the firm's pivot, hitting $118 during the Friday session.

May 16, 2025 16:05

French Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau agreed on a series of measures to tighten the security of crypto professionals at a Friday meeting following a number of kidnappings that have targeted industry figures in the country.

Measures including strengthening collaboration with internal security officers to protect professionals, a security briefing provided by police units and training to prevent crypto money laundering were discussed at the meeting. The Director General of the National Police and Gendarmerie and representatives from the Association for the Development of Digital Assets (ADAN) took part alongside other industry stakeholders.

The meeting was held after Tuesday's failed kidnapping attempt on the daughter and grandson of a crypto exchange CEO, the third that's received widespread coverage since the start of the year. In May the father of a French crypto millionaire was kidnapped, the BBC reported. And earlier in the year David Ballard, a co-founder of crypto-wallet developer Ledger was kidnapped alongside his wife. Both of the men had a finger severed.

"I wanted to reiterate my shock at the seriousness of the criminal acts that were committed and my determination to put an end to these unbearable attacks targeting crypto-asset professionals, just as they attacked banks and jewelry stores yesterday," Retailleau said.