Opinion by: Xin Yan, co-founder and CEO of Sign. Financial exclusion remains one of the most persistent challenges for national governments. World Bank data highlights how more than 1.3 billion adults remain unbanked, without access to a financial account. These people rely on cash, creating a ‘cash-digital divide’, which excludes them from the formal economy.

European Central Bank Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said on Tuesday that the ECB expects by this summer to announce the European standards it will use for a potential digital euro, a step aimed at helping payment providers and merchants prepare their systems ahead of any issuance decision. Cipollone told European Union lawmakers that, once

Bitcoin (BTC) rose back above $71,000 during the early Asian trading hours on Wednesday after Trump’s administration offered a 15-point plan to Iran to end the war, sparking short-term optimism across risk assets. Key takeaways: Bitcoin bounces 4% to $71,500 after President Trump sent Iran a 15-point proposal aimed at ending the war.  Bitcoin faces

Bhutan moved more Bitcoin from its state-linked wallet on Wednesday, extending a March drawdown in its sovereign holdings. Arkham data showed a Bhutan government-linked wallet transferred about 519.7 BTC, worth roughly $36.7 million, to two wallets on Wednesday. Onchain Lens said one of the destination wallets was linked to trading firm QCP Capital. The move

Circle is partnering with Sasai Fintech to expand the use of its USDC stablecoin across African payment corridors, targeting remittances, business transactions and mobile wallet services. According to Tuesday’s announcement, the collaboration will integrate the second-largest stablecoin into Sasai’s existing payments infrastructure, which supports cross-border transfers, enterprise payments and consumer wallets, with the aim of

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has launched an Innovation Task Force to help develop regulatory frameworks for crypto, AI and prediction markets. Chair Michael Selig said that the task force will work with the regulator’s Innovation Advisory Committee to create a framework focused on crypto, blockchain, AI, and prediction markets. The effort will

Lombard, a company building Bitcoin-based lending infrastructure, will team with Bitwise Asset Management to enable institutions to earn yield and borrow against Bitcoin (BTC) without moving assets out of custody, aiming to unlock hundreds of billions of dollars in Bitcoin held in institutional custody. The partnership was announced Tuesday at the Digital Asset Summit in

Bitcoin (BTC) holders are gradually becoming less prone to panic selling and instead building up cash buffers to deploy during discounted BTC buying opportunities. Onchain data supports this view, highlighting a large surge in stablecoin activity, with USD Coin (USDC) and Tether’s USDt (USDT) transfers reaching a combined $440 billion on March 22.  This shift

OpenAI has announced it is shutting down its video generation platform Sora after just six months, with CEO Sam Altman reportedly telling staff the company is winding down all of its video products. “We’re saying goodbye to the Sora app,” Sora posted to X on Tuesday. “We know this news is disappointing. We’ll share more

A group of Ethereum developers has launched a resource hub focused on protecting the blockchain from future quantum computing threats and securing the billions of dollars worth of value on the network. The “Post-Quantum Ethereum” website, launched on Tuesday by members of the Ethereum Foundation, says the organization’s new Post-Quantum team is planning to implement

Key takeaways: Investors dumped gold and bonds for cash as war-driven oil spikes and inflation forced a defensive market stance. Rising yields and a 20% rate hike chance signal a tight outlook, leaving Bitcoin vulnerable amid soaring US debt. Bitcoin (BTC) retested the $67,500 support level on Monday, a move that coincided with gold prices

Crypto asset manager 21Shares is expanding into actively managed exchange-traded products as the market moves beyond simple price-tracking funds. Duncan Moir, president of 21shares, told Cointelegraph in an exclusive interview that because crypto is a nascent and growing asset class, it is particularly well-suited to active management. He said the company combines bottom-up research on

Irish national police say they have cracked one of 12 Bitcoin wallets linked to a convicted drug dealer, years after they were confiscated and their access codes were thought to be gone forever. Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) said in a statement on Tuesday that it had “gained access to and seized a cryptocurrency wallet”

The net outflow of Bitcoin from exchanges over the past month suggests that investors have started to accumulate the cryptocurrency, according to a CryptoQuant analyst. March has been largely dominated by Bitcoin (BTC) outflows from crypto exchanges, aside from one spike in inflows just before the asset tapped a six-week high of $76,000 on March

Immunotherapy company Enlivex has raised $21 million via a debt financing agreement to purchase another 3 billion tokens tied to the prediction market platform Rain. Enlivex said on Tuesday it exercised an option to acquire another 3 billion Rain (RAIN) tokens at a 62% discount for $10 million on Sunday while extending its option to

Stock and crypto trading platform Robinhood has approved to buy back $1.5 billion worth of its shares. Robinhood said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Tuesday that the company’s board of directors approved the $1.5 billion share repurchase program, which it will carry out over the next three years. The program includes $1.1

Fira debuted its fixed-rate DeFi lending protocol with $450 million in pre-launch deposits, seeking to make long-term decentralized lending rates more predictable. Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Fira said on Tuesday it was launching with about $450 million in deposits, highlighting demand for fixed-rate onchain credit. Fira said the protocol’s fixed-rate credit market allows

Resolv Labs has temporarily paused its protocol after an exploit on Sunday in which an attacker minted 80 million unbacked tokens, knocking the dollar stablecoin sharply off its peg and briefly plunging the token to $0.14. The Resolv Foundation team announced on X on Monday evening that all protocol functions, including the app, were temporarily