Cryptopolitan

Crypto funds attracted $1.118 billion in weekly inflows, their largest single-week total since early January 2026.

According to CoinShares data, Bitcoin dominated the $1.1B crypto inflows with an $871M share. Ethereum also posted a strong rebound even when trading volumes remained well below their year-to-date average.

Bitcoin dominates $1.1B crypto inflows

Bitcoin attracted $872 million in weekly inflows for the period ending April 10, 2026, and brought its year-to-date total to just under $2 billion. Total assets under management for Bitcoin products reached $115.182 billion.

Alongside the strong weekly figure, short-Bitcoin products recorded $20.2 million in weekly inflows. This was the highest total for that category since November 2024.

Crypto inflows by asset. Source: CoinShares

iShares leads provider rankings as Grayscale posts outflows

Among providers, iShares recorded the largest weekly inflows at $871 million. This lifted its month-to-date total to $719 million and year-to-date inflows to $1.722 billion. Total assets under management for iShares products reached $66.521 billion.

Next, Fidelity witnessed inflows amounting to $98 million during the week but lagged behind by having a negative year-to-date outflow value of $1.158 billion. ProFunds Group saw $57 million in flows during the week, whereas Bitwise attracted inflows of $35 million.

As per outflows, ARK 21Shares received an inflow of $20 million and had a year-to-date outflow of $236 million. Grayscale recorded negative weekly figures, with losses totaling $11 million for the week and $7 million month-to-date, and also had negative year-to-date figures of $445 million in outflows.

21Shares AG witnessed inflows worth $8 million while CoinShares witnessed inflows of $5 million.

Ethereum posts strong rebound as altcoin flows turn mixed

Ethereum recorded $196.5 million in weekly inflows, its strongest recent weekly performance. Month-to-date inflows reached $107.9 million, and total assets under management for Ethereum products stood at $17.692 billion. The asset’s year-to-date position remained negative at $130 million in net outflows.

XRP saw a $19.3 million weekly net inflow, a monthly net flow of $18.8 million, and a year-to-date net flow of $178 million. Total AUM (assets under management) is estimated at $2.466 billion. Multiasset products raised $3 million weekly but had a year-to-date net outflow of $106 million.

Solana saw a slight net outflow of $2.5 million on a weekly basis, but its year-to-date number was still a positive one ($218 million), along with total AUM of $2.284 billion. Chainlink had a net inflow of $1.3 million, whereas Litecoin and Sui registered small net outflows for the week.

Positive sentiment concentrated in the US

The United States accounted for $1.065 billion of the week’s total inflows, or 95% of the global figure. Month-to-date flows from US-listed products reached $827.7 million.

Germany came second in terms of weekly inflows and month-to-date contributions at $34.6 million and $47.4 million, respectively. Meanwhile, Canada and Switzerland invested $7.8 million and $6.9 million, respectively. Australia had a small weekly outflow of $0.6 million, and Sweden registered a weekly outflow of $0.7 million.

Weekly trading volumes in digital assets grew 13% week over week to $21 billion. The total AUM for all products surged to $144.618 billion.

According to CoinShares, the strong crypto inflows during the week were due to both macro and geopolitical drivers. Progress toward a potential ceasefire in Iran, along with lower-than-projected CPI and spending numbers in the United States, seemed to have driven renewed interest.

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RAVE showed a risky side of tokens, as it broke out in a record short squeeze. RAVE peaked above $9.20, as Binance trading liquidated short positions. 

RAVE revealed the risks of betting on the downside of tokens. The project, which launched its token at the end of 2025, was underperforming, driven by the general weakness of crypto markets. As Cryptopolitan reported earlier, RAVE was just emerging, with a Coinbase listing in February.

For months, RAVE hovered around $0.25, but in the past day peaked at $9.79, gaining over 224% in the past day. However, the token was not habitually shorted, with most of the liquidated positions opened in the past week.

$RAVE went up from $0.2 to $2 in 3 weeks

800% pump with no clear catalyst in this bear market

What's actually going on:

• Rave is the token of RaveDAO, which hosts crypto parties

• There is no major annoucement during the pump

• On-chain activity looks manipulated

•… pic.twitter.com/af18fSba56

— jussy (@jussy_world) April 11, 2026

RAVE broke out over the weekend, with the latest leg of the rally on April 13. The price spike to a much higher price range put RAVE among the top liquidations for the past day, even surpassing ETH. 

RAVE liquidated all short positions after its spike above $9. | Source: Coinglass

RAVE caused $37.63M in short liquidations in the past day, sparking discontent among the crypto community. 

RAVE open interest increased suddenly

RAVE trading is mostly concentrated on GATE and other centralized exchanges. At the same time, futures on Binance suddenly increased their open interest. 

The increased futures bets started from April 6, showing the current short squeeze was almost a week in preparation. 

According to the liquidation heatmap, the rally above $9 wiped out all short positions. After that, the price started to retreat, down to $8.67. The rapid price action and sudden peak volumes have led to suggestions of manipulation. 

Unlike other tokens, the RAVE short open interest appeared suddenly. Open interest increased by 76% in the past day, with the bulk of positions on Binance and OKX. 

According to analysts, the open interest on Binance and BingX had the most suspicious growth and was probably not organic. Recent data suggests up to 50% of open interest may be manipulated. 

RAVE has not attracted shorting from retail traders, who have seen other tokens cause short squeezes. Instead, RAVE traders reportedly built up long positions to entice whales and professional traders to attempt shorting RAVE.

In the end, the operation succeeded, and RAVE posted price records for three days, squeezing out short traders. 

RAVE is controlled by the team

One of the major risks for RAVE is the highly controlled supply. The top 10 wallets hold 98.16% of all tokens. Any retail holders control just 1.83% of the supply, corresponding with the generally low interest in new assets. 

The top RAVE wallet holds over 42% of all tokens, and the second-biggest, another 23%. The presence of large whales also makes the token suspicious for manipulation at scale. The sudden price rally may allow some of the holders to cash out quickly, avoiding the worst of a bear market. 

RAVE was popular on social media, though reception was muted due to the bear market. The project’s mindshare actually fell by over 14% just before the rally, which may have turned out to be a rug pull between whales and professional traders. 

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Amber Group, a Hong Kong-based digital asset company providing crypto financial services to both institutional and high-net-worth investors globally, with over $1 trillion in cumulative trading volume, under the trade name Amber Premium, has received its crypto brokerage license in the UAE through Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA).

A proprietary platform built for institutions and private wealth, Amber Premium combines crypto-native innovation with institutional-grade infrastructure.

In a letter on its UAE-based website, Amber notes that Amber Premium FZE is a fully licensed Virtual Asset Service Provider by the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) of Dubai. The website is provided solely for VARA regulatory compliance. It has been made available exclusively to satisfy VARA’s requirement for a dedicated local entity website (regulatory imprint) on the public register.

Amber also notes that client migration is still in progress. It notes, “We will only enable full operations and public access after migration is fully complete and we have formally notified VARA and approved by the same of the final URL.”

As per the VARA website, Amber is licensed to offer broker-dealer Services, lending and borrowing services, as well as management and investment services for qualified and institutional investors.

Back in December 2025, Amber International Holding Limited (Nasdaq: AMBR) was granted a preliminary approval. At the time, the company served 4,900 HNWI, UHNWI, and institutional clients.

Amber Group becomes the 45th VASP to be licensed by VARA.

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Polkadot was under attack, as DOT tokens were minted through an unauthorized bridge transaction. The exploit comes at a time of increased vigilance for hacks against decentralized protocols. 

Polkadot, a long-running decentralized protocol, suffered an unauthorized DOT mint attack. On-chain research shows the exploit is based on a flawed Hyperbridge smart contract, which allowed the unauthorized minting of DOT tokens on the Ethereum network. 

The HandlerV1 contract was exploited for $242K, which affected the market price of the DOT token. Hyperbridge is the officially accepted multi-chain hub for Polkadot, so while the main protocol remains safe, the bridge itself may pose more risks. The Polkadot DAO approved Hyperbridge as the main hub for DOT/vDOT swaps across multiple chains. 

Just before the attack, Hyperbridge was almost idle, with virtually no DOT swaps. The attacker minted 1B new DOT on Ethereum and sold them in a single transaction. The bridge itself did not hold significant liquidity, but was capable of minting DOT without limit, based on the supplied deposit data.

Polkadot’s Hyperbridge hit by proof replay attack

The contract flaw allowed an attacker to perform a proof replay attack. The bridge allowed the attacker to reuse a previously accepted proof and pair it with a new request, allowing multiple privileged actions such as changing admin permissions. The entire hack was performed on the Ethereum network, not interacting with other Polkadot chains.

According to researchers, the attacker gained admin rights to the bridge contract, allowing the authorization of DOT minting. Certik also confirmed the attacker’s forged message was used to gain admin rights. 

On-chain security research discovered several transactions originating with Hyperbridge. This is the third bridge attack against Polkadot, following the XCM bridge exploit in 2025 for $35M, and the Nomad bridge hack in 2022 for $200M. 

While the latest attack was the smallest in scale, it still revealed potential flaws with the protocol, adding to the general risk of bridges. The exploit follows the April 1 hack against Drift Protocol, showing an increased effort to grab crypto tokens or use unauthorized minting exploits. 

DOT crashed below $1.20

Following the exploit, DOT crashed to $1.19. The flash sale of 1B DOT only led to a 2.9% loss, as the rapid sale arrived with price slippage. The exploiter only managed to exchange the DOT for $237M. 

As Cryptopolitan reported, Polkadot decided to cap the DOT supply at 2.1B tokens, but the current hack did not crash the token as much as expected, despite minting more than half the tokens in circulation. All the DOT from the exploit was sold in a single transfer and swapped into ETH.

To sell the tokens, the attacker used a Railgun wallet, already moving the ETH in a series of transactions. Railgun has been rarely used for exploits. In the first hours after the attack, the mixer could not blacklist the addresses fast enough, allowing the attacker to still use the service and disguise the origins of ETH. 

The Hyperbridge contracts have been paused, with no reports of additional assets affected. The recent series of hacks happens despite the ongoing bear market, attempting to still extract any available liquidity from crypto tokens.

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The public feud between World Liberty Financial (WLFI) and Justin Sun now appears headed toward legal action. Both sides are accusing each other of misconduct in the dispute. In the fresh attack, WLFI accused Sun of “playing the victim” while making “baseless allegations” to cover up his own actions.

Trump-linked firm stated that “We have the contracts. We have the evidence. We have the truth. See you in court,” to Sun. However, the Tron founder fired back at the allegations. He challenged the team to identify themselves publicly. He also accused them of secretly embedding “backdoor controls” into the protocol.

The back and forth showed a minor effect on both linked crypto projects. TRON (TRX) printed a green index while Bitcoin price dropped by more than 3% over the last 24 hours. TRX is trading at an average price of $0.322 at the press time. On the other side, WLFI price dropped by around 2% in the same period.

Can WLFI freeze funds?

Justin Sun, in a X post, alleged that the system allows WLFI to freeze investor funds “without disclosure or due process.” He added that someone should be held personally accountable.

The dispute came to light when he claimed that WLFI introduced a blacklist function into its token contracts. This happened after investors had already committed capital. Sun claims that no such mechanism was disclosed upfront.

Whoever is hiding behind this official account, step forward and identify yourself. Every action taken by the WLFI team to secretly implant backdoor controls over user assets, to freeze investor funds without disclosure or due process, and to treat the crypto community as a… https://t.co/NkxYv20eVj

— H.E. Justin Sun 👨‍🚀 🌞 (@justinsuntron) April 12, 2026

According to reports, the original WLFI token contract launched in September 2024 did not include blacklisting or seizure features. The contract was later upgraded. A blacklist function was reportedly added in August 2025. This happened almost 11 months after Sun’s initial investment and just before trading began.

Another upgrade happened in November that introduced a “batch reallocation” mechanism. WLFI has justified it as a way to recover stolen or compromised funds.

Sun has invested around $75 million and was once the project’s largest external backer. He claims that he became a direct target of these controls after his wallet was frozen. The TRON founder described himself as the “first and single largest victim” of the system.

Sun reportedly transferred a portion of his unlocked WLFI tokens (approx 55 million). This was done shortly after the first token unlock. These tokens were reportedly moved to his exchange, HTX.

Did WLFI freeze Sun’s wallet?

The project alleges that while retail users were locking tokens, Sun may have been selling into the market through backend activity. WLFI claims it flagged this behavior internally and froze his wallet. This was done on the basis of breached contractual terms. Meanwhile, these terms still remain unclear.

The WLFI’s token distribution structure has also drawn attention. Data suggests that Sun was placed in a separate vesting category from other investors. While most participants were grouped together, he was reportedly assigned a unique category. It had 20% of his allocation unlocked upfront as a lump sum. 

However, the remaining 80% appears to have no clearly defined vesting schedule months. The claimable balances are still showing zero.

Adding to concerns, the wallet freeze itself may not have required a broad consensus. Reports indicate that a single guardian address was able to blacklist Sun’s wallet. Usually, more approvals are needed for asset seizure functions.

WLFI’s own treasury activity is being scrutinized. The project is reportedly using billions of WLFI tokens as collateral on lending platforms. It allows borrowing large amounts of stablecoins and cycling liquidity through internal structures.

WLFI price is on a constant decline. It dipped by more than 53% in the last 90 days. WLFI is trading at an average price of $0.078 at the press time. It is down by 83% from its all-time high of $0.46. TRX is among the few cryptos that seem to have survived the crash. TRX price is up by more than 15% in the last 60 days.

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Big US commodity houses got hit hard in oil after the US-Israel war in Iran smashed the market’s old bet, according to a new study by Oliver Wyman which said these major trading groups lost over $10 billion at the start of the conflict.

More than 100 fuel tankers were stuck in the Gulf, oil shot higher, and companies that normally make money in chaos were suddenly losing so much on both trades and cargoes.

How commodity traders got the oil call wrong and paid for it… in cash

The pain also spread through the physical oil business. Cargoes that had already been sold for delivery later could not move as planned once the war jammed shipping in the Gulf, which left traders and oil companies with a nasty problem of delivery promises to keep but original barrels bringing trapped, so replacement cargoes had to be bought at much higher prices. You following?

Anyway Alexander Franke, whose Oliver Wyman’s head of risk and trading, said the early losses ran into the “billions of dollars.”

“For most participants the situation was a surprise. Before the war started, there was a strong conviction in the market that prices would fall, and because of the war, they spiked.”

That is the whole mess right there. The trade was leaning one way, and war sent oil hard in the other direction.

The Financial Times had earlier reported that Vitol, Trafigura, and Mercuria all took losses in the first days of the war. Some of those losses have since been reversed, but the first hit was still severe.

Traders with cargoes already on the water also got slapped with large margin calls when Brent crude futures jumped. That happened because a short futures position is often used to hedge a physical cargo. A margin call is not the same as a final loss, but it still forces a trader to post a lot of cash very quickly. So when oil is rally, of course that cash demand gets ugly fast.

That blow landed on an industry that had already cooled from its monster years. Oliver Wyman said gross margins for trading houses slipped to $92 billion last year, the lowest level since 2021 and far below the $145 billion peak in 2022. The report said metals trading was the one bright spot, with profits up 20%, while profits from oil desks fell 15%.

The report also said the industry’s “seat cost” rose by more than 30% since 2021.

At the same time, Oliver Wyman estimated future baseline annual earnings for the industry at $90 billion to $110 billion, not counting the mountain of geopolitical issues we got.

Oil prices rally back above $100 as Gulf traffic dries up

By Sunday, the market was staring at a new leg higher in oil. US crude for May delivery jumped 8% to $104.40 a barrel by press time. Brent for June delivery climbed more than 7% to $102.51. Prices surged as the US Navy prepared to impose a blockade on Iran’s ports after peace talks broke down over the weekend.

US Central Command, or CENTCOM, said Sunday that the military would blockade all maritime traffic entering and leaving Iranian ports Monday morning. It also said the US would not block vessels going to or from non-Iranian ports. CENTCOM said:-

“The blockade will be enforced impartially against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.”

Earlier that same day, President Donald Trump had threatened to blockade the Strait of Hormuz after the US and Iran failed to reach a deal to end the war during talks in Pakistan. Tehran then tied safe passage during the ceasefire to its own approval.

Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, said Sunday that the “key to the Strait of Hormuz” remained in the hands of the Islamic Republic, state news outlet Press TV reported.

Shipping data showed how thin traffic had become. LSEG data showed that only three supertankers made the journey on Saturday. Each vessel can carry up to 2 million barrels of oil. Before the war, more than 100 vessels a day were making that trip. On the diplomatic side, Vice President JD Vance, who led the US delegation, said the talks failed because Iran would not give an “affirmative commitment” that it would not seek a nuclear weapon. He told reporters in Islamabad, “The simple question is, do we see a fundamental commitment of will for the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon. We have not seen that yet, we hope that we will.” Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, said the US “failed to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation in this round of negotiations.”

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Inflation is staying hot for longer, and IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva says the Iran war is a big reason why. Speaking Sunday on CBS’ Face the Nation, Kristalina said the economic pain is spreading well beyond the countries involved in the fighting.

Kristalina explained that countries close to the conflict are taking a hard hit. She also said oil-importing nations are getting squeezed, especially those with little protection against rising costs.

“It is global. Everybody uses energy. Everybody feels the pinch of prices going up. And it is asymmetric. It affects different countries differently. If you are in the vicinity of the conflict, it’s a big hit on you. If you are an oil importer, it is a big hit on you. If you have no reserves to protect yourself, you are in a very tough situation,” Kristalina said.

IMF says poorer economies absorb the hardest blow from higher energy costs

Kristalina then said some of the worst pain is now being felt across Asia, where many economies rely heavily on imported energy.

“Poor, vulnerable countries, whether they’re in Asia or in Sub-Saharan Africa, they’re being hammered dramatically, and when we discuss our response, we will zero in on these highly vulnerable countries,” said Kristalina.

We know that last week brought a cease-fire, but it was shaky, and the future of the conflict is still unclear. That leaves a lot of uncertainty for workers, shoppers, and businesses in the United States and elsewhere. A regular Wall Street Journal survey of economists now shows a weaker outlook for the year ahead than earlier estimates this year.

Even so, most of those economists do not think the war will fully knock down an economy that has already lived through sharp inflation and major policy changes in trade and immigration. They now put the chance of a recession in the next 12 months at 33%, up from 27% in January.

The same survey, taken from April 3 through April 9, cut its 2026 growth forecast to 2% from 2.2%. It also raised its estimate for year-end consumer inflation to 3.2% from 2.6%. The outlook for hiring got weaker too. Economists now expect net job growth of 45,000 a month, down from the earlier estimate of 64,500.

Oil market damage keeps inflation pressure alive in America’s economy

Kristalina also said there will be no quick repair job, even if the fighting cools in the coming days or weeks. She told Margaret Brennan that the war has damaged infrastructure, and that damage will take time to undo.

“We have hopes for peace that would improve the conditions for everybody, but we are also looking at impact on infrastructure. A lot has been damaged, and it would take time to bring back to full operation,” she said.

That means even if the battlefield goes quieter, the economic mess can keep going.

Kristalina said the current crisis could push more governments toward greener energy plans, even though those plans will not help overnight.

“The one good thing that we need to remember is that whenever we have an energy shock, we improve,” she said. “Every energy shock in the past would lead to two things: more energy efficiency and more diversification of energy.”

Cryptopolitan reported on Friday that America’s latest inflation report said economists think those oil disruptions can keep lifting prices in the months ahead even if the cease-fire holds.

The survey expects West Texas Intermediate crude, the main U.S. oil benchmark, to fall to $79.66 a barrel by the end of the year.

That would still be about 18% below Friday’s closing price of $96.57. But economists still raised their year-end forecast for core inflation, which strips out food and energy, to 2.9% from 2.6%.

That measure is based on the personal consumption expenditures index, which the Federal Reserve watches closely. They were also asked how high crude would need to go for recession odds to climb above 50%.

Answers ranged from $95 to $225 a barrel, with an average of $146. Estimates for how long oil would need to stay high ranged from four weeks to 55 weeks, with an average of 12 weeks.

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UK regulators are racing to assess the danger posed by Anthropic’s latest AI model, after officials decided its ability to find hidden software flaws could become a direct risk for banks, insurers, exchanges, and the wider financial system.

According to the Financial Times, the talks involve the Bank of England, the Financial Conduct Authority, HM Treasury, and the National Cyber Security Centre, which are reviewing vulnerabilities in IT systems across British finance.

British banks, insurers, and exchanges will be warned within the next fortnight about risks linked to Claude Mythos Preview, the latest release from Anthropic, which was previously reported by Cryptopolitan. The British response follows a summons from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who called leaders from major Wall Street banks to discuss the same issue.

Last week, when Anthropic released Mythos to select customers, the $380 billion San Francisco start-up said the system had already found “thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities, including some in every major operating system and web browser,” including some that had gone unnoticed for decades.

Regulators prepare bank warnings as Anthropic’s cyber model drags old system flaws into view

The issue is set for the next meeting of the Cross Market Operational Resilience Group, or CMORG, where British regulators and finance companies discuss threats to the sector. CMORG is co-chaired by Duncan Mackinnon, the Bank of England’s executive director for supervisory risk, and David Postings, head of UK Finance.

The group includes senior representatives from eight of the biggest UK banks, four financial infrastructure providers, two insurers, plus the NCSC, the FCA, and HM Treasury. The Telegraph first reported the agenda. The Bank of England declined to comment.

Anthropic said, “It would not be long before such capabilities proliferate, potentially beyond actors who are committed to deploying them safely.” It also warned that “the fallout for economies, public safety, and national security could be severe.”

Officials are examining whether tools like this could expose weak spots across payment systems, trading venues, insurance networks, and other core parts of the market. David Raw, managing director for resilience at UK Finance, said, “We are aware of the press reports on the Anthropic AI development and the risks highlighted.”

He added, “UK Finance engages with our members and through our public/private partnerships on any significant operational risks that could affect the resilience of the UK financial services sector.”

The Bank of England can also call the separate Cross Market Business Continuity Group within one to two hours during an urgent threat, but it has not done that here.

OpenAI pauses Stargate UK while Britain wrestles with power costs and AI rule uncertainty

The wider AI backdrop is rough at the same time. OpenAI, a rival to Anthropic, is pausing its multibillion-pound UK data center project, Stargate UK. The plan included a large site in northeast England and access to powerful chips through partnerships with Nvidia and Nscale.

It was part of a wider £31 billion UK tech investment package. On Thursday, an OpenAI spokesperson said the company would move ahead only when the “right conditions” could “enable long-term infrastructure investment.”

The spokesperson said, “We see huge potential for the UK’s AI future. London is home to our largest international research hub, and we support the government’s ambition to be an AI leader.” They added:-

“AI compute is foundational to that goal. We continue to explore Stargate UK and will move forward when the right conditions such as regulation and the cost of energy enable long-term infrastructure investment.”

When OpenAI announced the project in September, it said it would strengthen the UK’s “sovereign compute capabilities” and bolster native AI development. It also said the project would help power the future economy, boost competitiveness, and support the national AI Opportunities Action Plan.

But Britain’s energy prices were already far above those in the US before the Iran war drove costs higher, and uncertainty remains over whether the law will change to let AI firms train models on copyrighted works through an “opt out” system for creators.

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Donald Trump said Sunday that the United States now controls the Strait of Hormuz after talks in Pakistan meant to stop the war he started with Iran ended with no agreement.

Trump said many points were settled, but the one that mattered most was not, which is nuclear weapons. So he said the U.S. Navy will begin blocking ships trying to enter or leave the strait, and he said Washington will also go after vessels in international waters that paid Iran a toll in crypto or yuan, because, according to him, these toll payments are illegal.

Trump orders a blockade after Pakistan talks fail on the nuclear issue

“THIS IS WORLD EXTORTION, and Leaders of Countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted. I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran,” said Trump.

He added that the goal later could become “ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN, ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO OUT,” but he said that had not happened because Iran kept raising fears that mines might still be in the water.

Later, Trump said Iran had promised to open the Strait of Hormuz and then failed to do it, which apparently caused anxiety, disruption, and pain across many countries. He also said Iran claimed mines had been placed in the water even though, according to him, its naval force and many of the units used to drop mines had already been destroyed.

“They may have done so, but what ship owner would want to take the chance?” he said. He demanded that Iran move fast to reopen the waterway and said every law on the books was being broken.

Trump said the talks were held under the leadership of Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan.

Trump also claimed they kept thanking him for saving between 30 million and 50 million lives in what he described as a possible war with India. The meeting with Iran, he said, began early in the morning and ran through the night, lasting close to 20 hours.

“IRAN IS UNWILLING TO GIVE UP ITS NUCLEAR AMBITIONS!” he said. He named Iran’s representatives as Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Abbas Araghchi, and Ali Bagheri, and wrongfully claimed that his own envoys had developed a respectful relationship with them during the long talks, but he said that meant nothing.

Oil tankers keep moving while traders and shipowners price in fear

Meanwhile, Google search interest for “price of oil” jumped to its highest point in records going back to 2004. That level was reported to be 300% above the peaks seen during both the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war and the 2008 financial crisis. It was also 235% above the 2020 pandemic spike, when oil briefly traded below zero.

Searches for “Strait of Hormuz” also hit a record high, rising 300% above June 2025, when the 12-Day War between Israel and Iran had already pushed fears of a closure.

Even with that fear, shipping data showed that three supertankers loaded with crude passed through the strait during the fragile truce between the United States and Iran.

The vessels were the Liberia-flagged VLCC Serifos and the China-flagged VLCCs Cospearl Lake and He Rong Hai. Data from the London Stock Exchange Group showed they exited the Hormuz Passage trial anchorage on Saturday, using a route that bypasses Iran’s Larak Island. Each of those tankers can carry 2 million barrels of oil.

The Serifos was chartered by the Thai state energy firm PTT, according to LSEG and Kpler data. It was also among seven vessels for which Malaysia sought Iranian clearance to pass through the strait, according to two people cited by Reuters.

The ship was carrying crude loaded from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in early March, and it is expected to reach Malacca Port in Malaysia on April 21.

On the Iranian side, Press TV said the talks failed because of what it called excessive U.S. demands, with both the strait and Iran’s nuclear program remaining central points of dispute.

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Bittensor is trying to rebuild investor confidence following one of the most damaging internal scuffles in the decentralized artificial intelligence sector’s short history.

Ironically, it plans on rectifying the challenges by launching a recovery plan that was drafted by the very man who just walked out the network’s door. 

Jacob Steeves, co-founder of the network, shared the above information in an extended statement that is also seen as a response to Samuel Dare’s announcement of the departure of subnet developer Covenant AI from the Bittensor network.

Bittensor’s native token, TAO, lost about a quarter of its value in under 24 hours, following Dare, who is Covenant AI’s founder, publishing a scathing public statement accusing Steeves of running a centralized operation behind a decentralized facade.

What drove one of crypto’s most prominent AI builders to the exit?

Covenant AI operated three subnets in Bittensor’s network and delivered the Covenant-72B, which many in the decentralized AI sector considered a landmark achievement.

Covenant-72B is a 72-billion-parameter language model trained permissionlessly across more than 70 independent contributors on commodity hardware.

In his April 10 statement, Dare alleged that Steeves had suspended emissions to Covenant AI’s subnets, overridden the team’s moderation authority over its own community channels, unilaterally deprecated its subnet infrastructure, and applied economic pressure through large, timed token sales. 

He criticized Bittensor’s governance, alleging that it is not decentralized as portrayed. Dare wrote, “Bittensor operates a triumvirate structure, three individuals who manage the multisig for network upgrades, presented to the community as distributed governance. It is not. It is decentralization theater.”

Dare added, “Jacob Steeves maintains effective control over the triumvirate, resists any meaningful transfer of authority, and deploys changes unilaterally whenever he chooses, without process and without consensus. The individuals involved serve as legal shields, people who can be held accountable and sued while he remains insulated.”

Dare’s comments triggered an immediate sell-off, compounded by reports that Covenant AI had itself offloaded around 37,000 TAO tokens, worth more than $10 million, prompting accusations of a coordinated exit at retail investors’ expense. 

How badly did the drama damage TAO and Bittensor’s institutional standing?

The market has not reacted favorably to TAO, which dropped from the $337 range to a low of $254 within 12 hours, a decline of over 25%. The token has since come up a bit, trading around $261 as of the time of writing.

The episode arrived at a particularly delicate moment for Bittensor’s institutional narrative. Just days before the crisis broke, asset manager Grayscale had filed an amendment to its S-1 registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, advancing its effort to convert its over-the-counter Bittensor Trust (GTAO) into a listed spot exchange-traded fund. 

However, with the latest development, that institutional momentum now faces a more skeptical audience.

GTAO is currently trading at $9.20, a decline of over 12.5% as of the close of trading on April 10.

Can a proposal built by the man who just left save the network?

Steeves’ recovery plan is based on a feature called Locked Stake. The mechanism would introduce a time dimension to token ownership on Bittensor. 

Subnet owners would be able to lock their holdings for a defined period, making the combination of stake size and remaining lock duration a new, publicly legible measure of commitment. 

In his statement, Steeves wrote that Locked Stake was among the last pieces of work Dare completed before departing the Opentensor Foundation, adding that his failure to implement it sooner was his “real error,” suggesting that the mechanism might have prevented this 25% value drop.

On the network’s operational continuity, Steeves said members of the mining community, and potentially former Covenant team members, are already organizing to sustain work on subnets 3, 39 and 81. 

Steeves added that the governance proposal will be put to the community at Bittensor’s next open Thursday call on its Discord server.

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TRON founder, Justin Sun, has accused Trump’s World Liberty Financial of embedding a trap in its code that permits the arbitrary freezing, restricting or confiscating the property rights of any token holder. 

Sun claims he has been a victim of the trap, alleging that his wallet was frozen back in 2025. Sun’s comments pile on as lawmakers investigate Trump’s upcoming gala, sharing concerns about political access being bought. 

What is Justin Sun criticizing WLFI’s code?

Justin Sun, the founder of the TRON blockchain (TRX), has publicly turned against World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a DeFi project associated with the Trump family. 

In a series of posts on X, Sun alleged that WLFI’s smart contract contains a hidden “backdoor blacklist function” that gives the WLFI team unilateral power. He claims they can freeze, restrict, or confiscate the property rights of any token holder “without notice, without reason, and without any avenue for recourse.”

The investor stated that this feature was never disclosed to him or other backers when he invested. He emphasized that this mechanism turns the platform into a trap for retail investors and claims he is the “first and largest victim” of this practice. 

He alleges that his personal WLFI token wallet was illegally blacklisted by the project as early as 2025. According to a previous Cryptopolitan report, Sun’s assets were blacklisted in September after he transferred roughly $9 million in WLFI tokens.

Furthermore, Sun accused the “bad actors” running the project of holding fake community votes where outcomes have already been decided, and key information is withheld from voters. He stated that the project’s leaders only represent “the will of those who designed them,” not the community.

“The WLFI team’s actions are eroding the community’s trust in the project. Unlock the tokens. Uphold transparency to the community.” Sun wrote.

Trump token prices crash

Amid these allegations, Trump-associated crypto assets are facing severe declines. The WLFI token, for instance, has plummeted nearly 65% from its peak in September 2025. The token is currently trading near $0.079. 

Cryptopolitan reported that the Official Trump memecoin (TRUMP) is in an even worse position, facing a steep decline from its January 2025 peak of around $49 to a current price of approximately $2.83. 

The latest World Liberty Financial price crash is linked to controversy surrounding how WLFI manages its treasury. On-chain data revealed that the project borrowed roughly $75 million in stablecoins using its own WLFI tokens as collateral on the Dolomite lending protocol. Critics call this “circular financing.” 

WLFI’s actions have raised concerns that if the token’s price drops further, it could potentially collapse the protocol’s stablecoin pools. Data shows that WLFI’s activity currently makes up 55% of Dolomite’s total value locked, creating a massive concentration risk. 

Democratic lawmakers like Senators Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal, and Adam Schiff are also investigating Trump, but rather than his finances, they have sent letters demanding information regarding his upcoming “Gala” for token holders scheduled for April 25 at Mar-a-Lago. 

The lawmakers are concerned that the event, which offers exclusive access to the President for top-tier token holders, is simply a way for wealthy crypto investors to buy political access and influence certain decisions. 

Following its decline and Sun’s damning allegations, the WLFI team has announced plans to organize a vote next week. The team is proposing a phased token unlock in an attempt to appease early buyers who are currently locked out of their funds. 

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Intel ripped higher this week, but Wall Street still is not fully buying the idea that the company is fixed. The INTL stock surged by 51% in eight trading days and nearly 25% for the week by Friday midday, putting it among the market’s most overbought names.

The rally came as traders rushed into chip stocks while the broader market climbed on hopes that the fragile ceasefire between the United States and Iran would hold. The Nasdaq Composite rose 4.7% for the week. The S&P 500 gained 3.6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 3%.

Intel finished last week with an RSI of 75, meaning deep overbought territory.

Traders still keep buying though, specifically thanks to two partnership updates gave the stock new boost just as software names were plunging, with the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF down 7% for the week.

Google expands its Intel work as Lip-Bu Tan ties the chipmaker to Musk’s Texas factory

The first boost came from Google, which said it will use multiple generations of Intel central processing units in its artificial intelligence data centers. That was an expansion of an existing relationship.

The second boost came from Intel chief executive Lip-Bu Tan. In a LinkedIn post this week, Tan said Intel was helping design, manufacture, and package custom chips for SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla at Elon Musk’s Terafab project, a chip factory in Texas.

The harder question is whether the business can support the stock rally over time. The case for Intel is no longer about its past. It is about whether future products, factory control, and execution can produce better results later. That is where the company’s buyout of Apollo’s 49% stake in the Ireland Fab 34 joint venture comes in.

Intel agreed to pay $14.2 billion, using cash and a $6.5 billion bridge loan until refinancing happens later. Once that deal closes, all manufacturing in Ireland will sit directly under Intel’s control.

Intel tries to rebuild its server lineup as funds cut stakes and other firms step in

Meanwhile, TD Cowen estimates that in Q4 2025, only about 20% of Intel’s x86 server CPU sales will come from its third generation performance chips. That means older tenth and seventh generation x86 server products are still expected to lead unit sales for now.

The company has also said it expects some improvement from Diamond Rapids in the second half of 2025, with some progress expected in Q2. Those chips are tied to the second generation of the Platinum Line, though the family setup is different from what is being sold now.

After that, Coral Rapids is expected to arrive in the second half of 2026 or later. That line could reset competition in x86 server CPUs, but likely at lower price points than today’s products.

Over on Wall Street, Guardian Investment Management cut its stake in Intel by 34.8% in the fourth quarter just this Friday. The company sold 16,300 shares and ended with 30,550 shares worth $1.127 million, and Intel had made up 0.9% of Guardian’s portfolio and ranked as its 29th largest holding.

Other companies opened or increased positions. Corundum Trust Company started a stake worth about $29,000 in the third quarter. Raleigh Capital Management opened a position worth about $29,000 in the fourth quarter. Provenance Wealth Advisors increased its position by 89.2%, adding 446 shares to reach 946 shares worth $32,000.

Strengthening Families & Communities opened a stake worth about $33,000, and GoalVest Advisory opened one worth about $34,000. Overall, 64.53% of Intel shares are held by institutional investors.

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DeepSeek is hiring workers in Inner Mongolia for its late April launch, its first big release built to run on Huawei processors instead of American ones.

The firm also posted openings for server maintenance engineers and delivery managers in Ulanqab, a city in Inner Mongolia. The Hangzhou company hasn’t advertised on-site jobs for its computing infrastructure before.

The V4 set for late April uses a Mixture-of-Experts design with about 1 trillion parameters total, though just 32 to 37 billion work on any task. That keeps costs down as the model gets bigger.

“If they have successfully trained V4 entirely on Huawei silicon, it signals a material shift in the geopolitical tech landscape,” said Stephen Wu from Carthage Capital.

The release has been pushed back twice from February.

Silicon Valley rivals unite against Chinese firms

OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google said April 6 they’d share intelligence to stop Chinese companies from copying their models. The three competitors are working together through the Frontier Model Forum, an industry group from 2023.

Anthropic tracked 16 million exchanges from three Chinese firms across about 24,000 fake accounts. The companies allegedly used adversarial distillation, flooding ChatGPT and Claude with queries, then training their models on the responses.

OpenAI accused DeepSeek of copying its models “through new, obfuscated methods” in a February 12 memo to the House Select Committee on China.

The restrictions that started in 2022 to slow China’s AI development first led to chip output dropping 9.8% in 2022. However, those export controls on advanced chips seem to now be backfiring.

Domestic chips projected to reach 50% market share

Things are shifting. TrendForce projects domestic chips will reach 50% of China’s AI chip market in 2026. Chinese semiconductor equipment went from 25% to 35% of the home market between 2024 and 2025, beating the Made in China 2025 target of 30%.

China has put about $150 billion into chip development. The U.S. CHIPS and Science Act authorized $52.7 billion.

The switch to Huawei chips has not been without delays. As reported by Cryptopolitan previously, DeepSeek was expected to use banned Nvidia chips without revealing any technical signs.

Moving away from Nvidia takes “substantial re-engineering,” according to Wei Sun, principal AI analyst at Counterpoint Research. “That transition can slow development cycles and introduce performance trade-offs, especially for V4, a model expected to be state-of-the-art,” he said.

DeepSeek first gained prominence in January 2024 with R1, a reasoning model President Trump called a “wake-up call” for American companies. The company’s cheap tools are used widely in China and places like Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

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XRP investors are increasingly targeting annual passive returns of up to 10% as new financial infrastructure and decentralized finance (DeFi) tools expand yield-generating opportunities.

XRP advocate Kevin Cage suggested that upcoming financial frameworks could yield returns of 5% to 10% over time. He acknowledged that, at the moment, there aren’t many ways to earn interest on the token, so most people are just sitting on their bags. However, he is convinced things are about to change with the rollout of new DeFi platforms, institutional setups, and cross-chain tech.

He shared on X: “In the next few years, we’ll likely be able to earn 5-10% on our crypto in multiple ways. We know that XRP isn’t a Proof-of-Stake coin. But yield is coming through the new infrastructure being built.”

A growing ecosystem of third-party platforms is bridging this gap by offering “staking-like” services, including lending, liquidity provision, and yield farming.

Crypto lending platforms could bring in between 3% and 8% in returns, according to Cage

Cage noted that XRP holders will soon have multiple ways to generate passive income on their tokens. He estimated that standard crypto lending platforms could yield between 3% and 8%, while more structured institutional products could push annual returns to 5% to 12%.

He also noted that tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) are playing a larger role and could deliver returns between 4% and 10%. Cage added that cross-chain strategies will soon help XRP holders to gain yield across multiple blockchains.

He also envisioned a future where financial apps, exchanges, and wallets offer built-in, automated yield accounts. Cage noted that this development will make it incredibly easy for XRP holders to start earning passive income.

In response to Cage’s insights, one commenter remarked in support, “Definitely excited for Collateral. That’s the new financial system. Within institutional custody, holders can likely earn an average of 5%, as institutions holding the asset also seek yield from collateral holdings. They want yield, not your token.”

However, one user on X, though agreeing with Cage’s direction, cautioned that future gains from the token will depend on its utility rather than the asset itself, stressing that every yield comes with risk. He contended, “Yield will come. Just not without trade-offs.”

XRP is already increasing its utility and application

Chief Strategy Officer at Ēnosys Global, Darren Williams, also in response to Cage’s post, noted that XRP is already being used as FXRP in a CDP on Enosys Loans via Flare Network, backing roughly $9 million in debt. 

The Flare blockchain unlocked active lending and borrowing markets for XRP-linked assets through an integration with Morpho. The development team announced that this update allows users to lend and borrow FXRP, Flare’s native, asset-backed version of XRP. Holders of FXRP can now deposit their tokens to earn interest or use them as collateral to secure loans in other digital assets, including stablecoins.

Flare Network also partnered with Xaman Wallet to simplify access, enabling XRP holders to tap into DeFi directly from their wallets. With the integration, holders can earn yield via self-custody, aligning it with capabilities already seen on Ethereum and Solana.

The setup also allows investors to deposit XRP into Upshift’s earnXRP vault directly from the Xaman wallet interface. The system proceeds to mint FXRP on Flare and channel it into curated yield strategies managed by Clearstar, routing the profits back to the user. Remarkably, holders can access this without downloading new software, buying native gas tokens, or managing a separate set of private keys.

Additionally, entities such as Axelar and Hex Trust have deployed decentralized finance frameworks engineered specifically for XRP market participants, thereby expanding the operational utility of their holdings.

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Scientists at Life Biosciences are preparing to begin testing partial reprogramming in people. It will mark the first time such therapy, which can reset the biological age of cells, is being introduced in humans. 

Life Biosciences’ approach is partly based on the Yamanaka factors, a set of four transcription factors, namely Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc, which can reprogram an adult cell into an induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell that can virtually become any cell type in the body.

The Yamanaka factors worked well in mice, but there were concerns about their unknown potential in the body, especially with the c-Myc factor, which is particularly powerful and can trigger cancer. 

Life Biosciences to begin trial for cellular reprogramming on humans

In the quest to experiment with safer ways to apply the Yamanka factors, Yuancheng Ryan Lu, a student of Harvard’s Dr. David Sinclair, the founder of Life Biosciences, successfully regenerated eye cells in mice by introducing just three of the factors, excluding the c-Myc factor. 

Story @nature about the challenge of discovering safe epigenetic reprogramming to reverse biological age, by my student Yuancheng Lu and now in clinical trials🤞Here’s that moment: https://t.co/NFXUtXDfYB pic.twitter.com/ssYTkffGvl

— David Sinclair (@davidasinclair) April 11, 2026

Lu’s positive study in the mice forms the basis for Life Biosciences’ clinical trial targeting people with eye conditions due to aging. It will be the world’s first human trial, according to a recent report by Nature. 

The trial begins later this year and would treat up to 12 people with glaucoma. According to the report, the scientists will use a virus to introduce the three Yamanaka factors into one eye in patients whose retinal nerve has been damaged due to glaucoma. 

The team also plans to treat another 6 with NAION, which is reportedly the most common cause of sudden optic nerve-related vision loss in people over age 50. The patients will be followed up for five years, says Life Biosciences chief scientific officer, Sharon Rosenzweig-Lipson. 

Are we on the cusp of reversing aging?

The method of introducing three Yamanka factors, without c-Myc, is already proven to work well in animal studies. Sharon mentioned that similar studies in monkeys were successful, with no sign of cancer or other harmful effects. Other scientists have been able to replicate the procedure with similar positive results. 

However, the procedure is still not without some concerns. The c-Myc factor, which is being removed for a safer rejuvenation effect, is a well-known oncogene that can promote rapid cell division, which may be needed for some partially reprogrammed cells, said Vittorio Sebastiano, a biologist at the University of California, Irvine

Nevertheless, the clinical trial could mark a big breakthrough in rejuvenating old cells and potentially reversing human aging.

Many tech founders, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, are pro-longevity. In March, Brian, whose biotech firm NewLimit is also focused on epigenetic reprogramming, believes that getting old will soon become optional, Cryptopolitan reported.

Getting old shouldn't be viewed as inevitable, just because it happens to everyone. It's a disease that kills over 100,000 people a day, and hopefully it will be optional in the future.

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) March 17, 2026

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A steep sell-off in Trump-linked crypto assets is raising fresh scrutiny across the digital asset space, especially after the TRUMP token suffered a staggering 90% collapse.

The concern intensified after data from CoinGecko showed that the Official Trump ($TRUMP) token, a Solana-based meme cryptocurrency backed by the US President, fell to a record low of approximately $2.73 last month and is currently trading at $2.83, down 0.75% in the past 24 hours.

Moreover, as earlier reported by Cryptopolitan, the Trump-backed WLFI token has decreased by more than 19% this week, primarily due to complications arising from its multi-million-dollar self-collateralized loans on the Dolomite platform. 

The WLFI token dropped nearly 75% from its September 2025 peak of about $0.31, while the TRUMP meme coin has plunged by roughly 90% since hitting a high of more than $73 in January 2025.

Trump’s involvement in the crypto ecosystem significantly heightens public anxiety

Concerning the recent token price declines, Professor Tonya Evans, the Founder and CEO of Advantage Evans Global Regulatory Strategies, stated that, “We thought Sam Bankman-Fried or Gary Gensler were the worst things for the crypto industry, and they were terrible. But it turns out it was someone who surrounds himself with yes-men, takes every bit of value for himself, and quickly bankrupts companies and casinos without facing any consequences.” 

Democratic lawmakers serving in the United States Senate, including Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal, and Adam Schiff, also expressed concerns about Trump’s involvement in the crypto ecosystem.

Their concerns intensified after he released a public statement about an upcoming gala for token holders scheduled for April 25. According to them, the president misused his influence by providing token holders with exclusive access to him.

In an attempt to discover the truth, the three senators wrote a letter to Bill Zanker, the individual behind the introduction of the Trump meme coin, requesting further clarification concerning the objective of the upcoming gala.

In the meantime, Ross Gerber, the co-founder, President, and CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management, earlier issued a statement expressing his belief that introducing these coins around the inauguration period, followed by a sharp rise in meme tokens, diminished investor engagement in the sector.

Gerber explained that, “celebrity-backed meme coins often turn out to be scams or appear like one; either way, regular investors end up losing money while celebrities profit.” According to him, people, deceived by these scams, ultimately suffer losses, as their funds are stolen rather than merely lost. 

Gerber deemed this situation a critical challenge in the sector. He noted that losing money on meme coins often drives people away from crypto for good. Additionally, he stressed that the Trump administration’s lenient regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies diminishes their appeal to everyday investors. 

Upcoming gala for token holders sparks heated debate  

Earlier, analysts observed a rapid price increase in $TRUMP Coin following the announcement of a new project event featuring a keynote address from Trump. This gathering, a Conference & Gala Luncheon, is scheduled to take place at Mar-a-Lago on April 25 this year.

The event is aimed at top TRUMP token holders and will follow the same approach as the private dinner the project hosted last year. Moreover, the organizers behind this occasion hinted that invitations to the luncheon are limited to the top 297 qualifying token holders.

In addition to the main attendees, the event will feature 18 high-profile participants, dubbed “Superstars,” including Donald Trump, who is expected to attend. The development drew inquiries from reporters seeking further details from the organizers.

In response, organizers said the event is designed to deliver exclusive, curated experiences to a select group of participants. As part of these perks, 29 chosen attendees will receive VIP access, including a private tour of the Mar-a-Lago estate.

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World Liberty Financial has come under heavy scrutiny, with many throwing the word “scam” on Crypto Twitter, over its recent WLFI Markets lending position and the sudden disappearance of the Trump family from the WLF team member page.

Speculations are that the Trump family is attempting to distance itself from World Liberty Financial. But the team is claiming otherwise.

The crypto project was launched in the fall of 2024, with the U.S. President and his sons, Eric, Trump Jr., and Barron, displayed on the team member page as co-founders, including Chase Herro, Zak Folkman, and the Witkoff family.

World Liberty was touted as a financial platform that would bridge the gap between traditional banking and decentralized finance. In March 2025, the team completed a third phase of WLFI token sale, raising a total of $550 million, according to reports. WLFI, which only became tradable in September 2025, doubles as the governance token of the platform. 

After the presale, however, it was observed that the positions of the Trump family were reduced to “Web3 Ambassador.” And now? The team member page on the website has been removed, with some speculating that the Trumps are trying to distance themselves from the project. 

Just at the bottom of the page, there is now a disclosure that Trump and his sons do not hold any formal operational role in World Liberty Financial, despite their known affiliation with the crypto project. 

“None of Donald J. Trump, his family members or any director, officer or employee of Trump Organization or of DT Marks LLC is an officer, director or employee of, WLF Holdco LLC or World Liberty Financial LLC,” it reads.

To add weight to these claims, speculators also pointed to Eric Trump deleting several WLFI-related posts on Twitter earlier this year, as Cryptopolitan reported.

Eric Trump, co-founder of WLFI, deleted several WLFI-related posts on X. Following the move, WLFI briefly fell more than 8%, while the USD stablecoin USD1 temporarily depegged to 0.9802 USDT. https://t.co/5W4apuqsb3 pic.twitter.com/7dUMJPApEh

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) February 23, 2026

“This is clearly FUD,” says Zach Witkoff

World Liberty Financial CEO Zach Witkoff dismissed these observations as FUD, saying both Donald and Eric Trump are still engaged with the project, and even tweet about the project weekly. Regarding the missing team page, Zach mentioned that the website was redesigned months ago. “This is clearly FUD,” he said.

Hey @Eljaboom we redesigned the website months ago. Don and Eric tweet about the project weekly and even have @worldlibertyfi in their twitter bios. This is clearly FUD.

— Zach Witkoff (@ZachWitkoff) April 11, 2026

Eric Trump’s Twitter bio says he’s an advocate for World Liberty Financial, while Donald Trump Jr.’s still says he’s a co-founder. 

Although the Trump family is not directly involved in the management of World Liberty, according to the webpage, they own a significant 38% stake in the WLF Holdco LLC, through DT Marks DEFI LLC. WLF Holdco LLC holds all of the rights to net protocol revenues from the WLF protocol. Previously, in March 2025, the stake was as high as 60%, according to Reuters. 

DT Marks DEFI LLC also holds 22.5 billion WLFI tokens, and is entitled to receive 75% of the net revenue from the WLFI token sale, including interest earned on the reserve assets backing USD1, a dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial.

WLF loan deal sparks fresh controversy

Another point of controversy on World Liberty Financial stems from its recent stablecoin loan deal on DeFi protocol Dolomite, whose co-founder advises WLF, which saw WLFI token decline by 10%, Cryptopolitan reported on Friday.

The WLF team deposited 5 billion WLFI tokens, worth $440 million, to borrow $75 million worth of USD1, although Arkham reports it was $150 million USDC. Part of the concern was that the World Liberty Financial team used its own tokens as collateral to drain Dolomite’s lending pool, so much so that many depositors were not able to withdraw. 

To defuse concerns, the team said being an anchor borrower allows them to generate yield that makes WLFI Markets compelling for everyone else. “No, we are nowhere near liquidation — and frankly, even if markets moved dramatically against us, we’d simply supply more collateral,” they wrote. 

The last line was particularly concerning for many people, who argued that deploying more volatile governance tokens as collateral could have more detrimental consequences, with some recalling past incidents with Terraforms Lab and FTX. 

Even more retarded, instead of repaying stablecoin debt, they would deposit more WLFI as collateral.

Sure, liquidation price decreases but it makes the problem worse, not better in the longer termhttps://t.co/h3YdBMY2ha

— Ignas | DeFi (@DefiIgnas) April 10, 2026

WLFI currently trades at $0.07989, a 1.4% decline in the last 24 hours. The token is down over 44% YTD. 

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Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent used a Wall Street Journal op-ed to press Congress to pass the Clarity Act, saying the United States cannot keep dragging its feet while the crypto market keeps getting bigger.

Scott warned Congress that this position is not guaranteed to last. “Over the past year, the global market capitalization of digital assets fluctuated between $2 trillion and $3 trillion. Nearly 1 in 6 Americans owns some form of digital asset. Major financial institutions have launched or sought approval for crypto-related products,” said Scott.

Bessent says Congress must end the confusion around crypto rules

Scott said the government has made one major step already; the Genius Act which Trump signed last year.

Still, he said the general crypto market remains stuck in a legal gray area. Outside stablecoins, Scott said there is still no clear framework for crypto markets in the United States.

Then he took a jab at the Biden administration’s SEC, which was led by crypto public enemy #1, Gary Gensler, who Scott said made overlapping and sometimes conflicting claims.

That left developers, exchanges, and investors without solid guidance on what rules applied, who had authority, and how companies were supposed to operate.

Scott said all of that uncertainty was what led to a huge share of crypto development going overseas, like Abu Dhabi and Singapore, which offered clearer rules, helping companies know how to register, what standards they had to meet, and what path they needed to follow to stay compliant. In the United States, he said, the legal risk often outweighed the benefit of staying.

In a post on X, Scott had also said, “Senate time is precious, and now is the time to act.”

Bessent lays out how the Clarity Act would pull crypto business back home

Scott said the answer is durable law, not more confusion, and the Clarity Act would split regulatory authority more clearly, create registration paths for trading platforms and intermediaries, and spell out when a crypto counts as a security and when it does not.

He also said the GENIUS Act cannot do the full job on its own, what with stablecoins now getting a legal footing. Scott said the next fight is over the infrastructure they support, which is tokenized assets, decentralized exchanges, and new ways for businesses to raise money.

He said the question is whether that activity, along with the jobs and tax revenue tied to it, gets built inside the United States or somewhere else.

To close out his Op-ed, Scott said the bill would also protect software developers so the technology behind digital finance stays open, secure, and built in the United States. He added that: “Congress will ensure that the next generation of financial innovation is built on American rails, backed by American institutions, and denominated in American dollars.”

In the past, Scott had told crypto entrepreneurs on X to “start your companies here. Launch your protocols here. And hire your workers here.”

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Europe’s stablecoin market seems to be now controlled by Circle, and not everyone is comfortable with that. The issuer of USDC is quietly becoming the dominant player in euro-denominated stablecoins through EURC. This shift triggered criticism from parts of the crypto community. Some of them see it less as a product win and more as a policy-driven outcome.

DeFi analyst Ignas called it out bluntly. He looks at Circle’s dominance as “a European fail.” In his view, Europe has repeatedly missed key technology waves. This includes Big Tech, cloud, and AI. However, it is now falling behind in the stablecoin sector.

The global crypto market witnessed a minor recovery rally. Its cumulative cap now stands around $2.47 trillion. Bitcoin price has jumped by more than 8% over the last 7 days. The stablecoin market is picking up and hovers around a $320 billion cap. Circle is the second biggest stablecoin in the race, with a cap of more than $78 billion.

Circle captures Europe? 

Ignas is a post highlighted that EURC is not even a core focus for Circle. ECB plans a digital EUR by 2029, but it will be proposing a 3,000 EUR holding limit per wallet. He sees this plan designed to fail. By then, Circle’s network effects get locked in. It seems that the euro stablecoin remains a much smaller piece of the business.

The USDC issuer has managed to capture a good share of the European market. There are several native stablecoin projects that exist in the region. The tally includes Qivalis, EURe, EURI, EURA, and more. They are still small in comparison to the major players. This is mainly due to a lack of funding and incentives for adoption.

He compared EURC, which holds a market cap of $460 million, with USDC. He called it a side project for an American company. Ignas claimed the Circle didn’t win on its product. They lobbied for the rules that gave them the market, he added. Dante Disparte (Circle policy chief) was lobbying for MiCA as “GDPR for crypto” since 2022.

3/ And Circle is now running the exact same playbook in the UK.

Dante Disparte just addressed the House of Lords pushing for a UK law that combines MiCA + the US GENIUS Act.

I was just reading his FT opinion letter and it finally clicked with me.

They lobby for the rules that… pic.twitter.com/t4ezKWieD9

— Ignas | DeFi (@DefiIgnas) April 10, 2026

DeFi analysts stated that Circle hosted “Navigating MiCA” sessions with Stefan Berger. When MiCA came into law, Circle was the only top 10 stablecoin issuer ready with a license. Meanwhile, Tether’s EURT was out and reportedly delisted from CEXs.

He mentioned that ‘Luckily’ Circle had a French EMI license to get all the European market share. They grew from 17% to 60% share in 12 months without competing. Ignas believes that Circle is now running the exact same playbook in the UK.

Circle under fire over hacks

The European Central Bank has been exploring a digital euro, but proposals under discussion include limits on wallet holdings and transfers. Ignas argued that such constraints could hinder adoption, especially if private-sector alternatives continue to build network effects in the meantime.

The company has called on EU authorities to loosen aspects of the bloc’s distributed ledger framework. It is particularly around settlement rules. They currently restrict how stablecoins can be used in capital markets. However, the USDC issuer insists that existing requirements are slowing adoption.

Circle landed under scrutiny over security and its incident response. This comes after the recent exploit of Solana-based Drift Protocol. It got looted of $285 million in a massive hack. Attackers moved $71 million in USDC as part of the exploit. 

On-chain investigator ZachXBT questioned whether Circle could have acted more quickly. He pointed out that the company could have frozen addresses linked to suspicious activity. It mentioned that the damages have receahed $420 million over the last few years across 15 different cases.

PeckShield reported that the hackers converted most of the rest of the stolen assets to USDC. The hacker used Circle’s cross-chain transfer protocol, CCTP. They bridge about $232 million in USDC from Solana to Ethereum after the Drift hack.

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