Coindesk

U.S. prosecutors have charged a 22-year-old Canadian man with stealing a combined $65 million in crypto through two separate decentralized finance (DeFi) hacks — the 2021 Indexed Finance exploit and the 2023 KyberSwap hack.In a newly-unsealed indictment filed in the Eastern District of New York (EDNY), prosecutors say Andean “Andy” Medjedovic was the mastermind behind both exploits. Though Medjedovic’s alleged role in the KyberSwap exploit was previously unknown, he has publicly admitted to being the Indexed Finance attacker, wiping $16 million from the DeFi platform when he was still a teenager.Read more: After Stealing $16M, This Teen Hacker Seems Intent on Testing ‘Code is Law’ in the CourtsMedjedovic did little to hide his identity as the Indexed Finance hacker because he...

U.S. financial markets have long been burdened with a patchwork of outdated, overly complex, paternalistic rules. Meanwhile, the government’s failure to establish a regulatory regime for digital assets, coupled with its aggressive persecution of the industry, has stifled innovation. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the world surged ahead, leaving the U.S. behind.Now, under President Trump’s leadership, we stand on the brink of a historic shift. His “largest deregulation campaign in history” and “revolution of common sense,” offers us a rare chance to remove artificial boundaries, retire antiquated philosophies, and rethink our approach to regulating financial markets and digital asset ecosystems. Instead of creating and being bound by reactive regulations designed for past crises and technologies, we can design flexible, forward-looking frameworks...

Cryptocurrencies in the real-world asset (RWA) sector led the recovery of the broader digital asset market from the overnight bloodbath, underscoring the strength of the tokenization investment narrative.Decentralized finance (DeFi) tokenized asset platform Ondo Finance's governance token was 16% higher on the day, surging almost 40% from the overnight lows. The protocol today unveiled Ondo Nexus, an instant minting and redemption service for tokenized Treasury issuers. The company behind the protocol is holding a summit in New York later this week with several traditional finance heavyweights including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton participating.The native token of MANTRA (OM), layer-1 blockchain designed for tokenized assets focusing on the Middle East market, rebounded 30% from Monday's bottom and was up 16% on the day....

Few crypto exchanges have been as busy in the last few months as Crypto.com.The company recently received a license from MiCA to operate in the E.U., and also in December voluntarily withdrew the lawsuit it filed against the SEC after receiving a Wells notice from the agency last summer (the withdrawal happened just a day after Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek met with then President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago). Not long after that meeting, the exchange announced it would re-enter the U.S. institutional exchange business after abandoning it in mid-2023 due to “limited demand.”Crypto.com also said in January it would allow its U.S. customers to trade stocks and ETFs in addition to crypto, and acquired several brokerage firms to further build...

Data portability is a commonly-repeated promise of crypto. “Take your followers and social graph across the internet.” “Bring your video game items across games and platforms.” “Log into any site with a single, unified identity.” These claims have excited builders and developers, but haven’t yet gone mainstream.Recent platform shifts have highlighted the fragility of our digital lives. With talks of a potential TikTok ban, creators face losing years of content and audience relationships overnight. Meanwhile, as US consumers embrace new AI models like DeepSeek, built in China, they face similar questions about where their data lives and who might get access to it.These are symptoms of a fundamental problem: users don't truly own or control their data. We live on...