Coindesk

Stablecoins and the role of Congress in addressing future digital assets legislation took center stage during one of the Senate Banking Committee's first hearings to focus on what a regulatory framework for crypto may look like.The Wednesday hearing, framed as the jumping-off point for further Congressional action on digital asset regulations, was the first hosted by the banking committee's new digital assets subcommittee and chaired by Wyoming Republican Cynthia Lummis, a longtime crypto proponent."We're on the precipice of finally creating a bipartisan legislative framework for both stablecoins and market structure," Lummis said in her opening statement, referring to draft legislation she introduced with New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand as a natural counterpart to the House's Financial Innovation and Technology for...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) might be done with Gemini, but Gemini isn’t done with the SEC.According to a Wednesday X post from Gemini co-founder and President Cameron Winklevoss, the SEC informed Gemini on Monday that it was closing its investigation into the New York-based crypto exchange and would not be filing enforcement charges against it.But the anti-climactic resolution to the long-running investigation was unsatisfying to Winklevoss, who said in his X post that the SEC’s retreat “does little to make up for the damage this agency has done to us, our industry, and America.”“The SEC cost us tens of millions of dollars in legal bills alone and hundreds of millions in lost productivity, creativity, and innovation,” Winklevoss...

Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has published a forensic review on last week's $1.5 billion hack, revealing that its systems had not been infiltrated and that the issue seemed to have stemmed from compromised Safe wallet infrastructure. Bybit concluded from the review that "the credentials of a Safe developer were compromised," which allowed the Lazarus hacking group to gain unauthorized access to the Safe wallet and subsequently deceive Bybit staff into signing the malicious transaction.However, a person familiar with the matter told CoinDesk that despite the wallet's infrastructure being compromised by social engineering, the hack would not have been possible had Bybit not "blind signed" the transaction. The term refers to a mechanism where a smart contract transaction is approved without comprehensive...

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm Ben Schiller, managing editor at CoinDesk.In this issue:Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade Goes LiveAvalanche Visa card launchedEthereum Foundation executive director leavingHackers using GitHub to steal bitcoinNetwork NewsPECTRA GOES LIVE ON TESTNET: Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade went live on the Holesky testnet Feb. 24 but failed to finalize in the expected time. The Pectra hard fork combines together 11 major upgrades, or "Ethereum improvement proposals" (EIPs), into one package. At the heart of this is EIP-7702, which is supposed to improve the user-experience of crypto wallets. The proposal, which was scribbled by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in just 22 minutes, will allow wallets to have some smart...

Bitcoin miners that are still drawing electricity from grid-attached power sources will struggle after the next halving event in 2028, MARA Holdings (MARA) said in a shareholder letter. "For those miners still relying on grid-attached power, the writing is on the wall. Energy costs will only rise. The 2028 halving will likely force another industry-wide reckoning. Many may not survive," the letter said. The statement comes as the mining industry has already been struggling to stay profitable following a recent halving event that saw bitcoin rewards cut in half, forcing some miners to diversify their revenue sources into high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI). Read more: AI Is Here, but That Doesn’t Mean Bitcoin Miners Are Finished: BlockspaceMARA, one...