Coindesk

Enforcement Director Ian McGinley is leaving the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in a week, ending a relatively short tenure that saw some high-profile crypto cases.He arrived at the agency in February 2023, a month before the CFTC sued Binance and then-CEO Changpeng Zhao for violating U.S. commodities laws. During his tenure, he also oversaw the conclusion of the enforcement work against collapsed global platform FTX, which he characterized as the largest recovery of dollars for victims in CFTC history. The agency has since pursued actions against KuCoin and Falcon Labs, among other projects. In a 2023 speech, McGinley addressed the agency's special focus on digital assets, saying, "The CFTC has risen to the challenge in a remarkable fashion."In the statement...

Recent figures reveal that cybercrime inflicted losses of $298 billion on German companies alone in 2024, with 90% of surveyed businesses expecting damages to rise further. The primary targets? Sensitive data like intellectual property, patents and user credentials. These alarming statistics underscore the urgent need for more secure and scalable data infrastructure to mitigate cyber risks.While blockchain technology is often safe on the layer 1 protocol level, its application in enterprise-scale data management is still evolving. Traditional centralized systems often prioritize convenience over security, leaving vulnerabilities that cybercriminals exploit. Though blockchain’s promise of security and data sovereignty is clear, its enterprise adoption has been hindered by challenges in scalability, accessibility and speed.Large organizations such as Florida-based National Public Data (NPD),...

Bhutan, a small country in South Asia, is making big waves in the crypto world.The Kingdom, which populates roughly 770,000 people and lies between India, China and Nepal, just made headlines after one of its cities adopted a crypto reserve strategy. This includes bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), and Binance’s BNB token (BNB).El Salvador has previously made bitcoin part of the country’s national reserve and several other countries, including the United States, are considering taking similar measures to strengthen its already robust economy.But Bhutan could set an example for smaller countries, where making crypto part of their national reserve strategy could have an enormous economic impact.“They are coming out guns loaded to show the world what’s possible in the digital asset...

Kenya’s Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi has said the country is preparing legislation to legalize cryptocurrencies, a shift from the government’s previous warnings against the industry."The emergence and growth of Virtual Assets (VAs) and Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) have given rise to innovations in the local and international financial system with dynamic opportunities and challenges," Mbadi said according to local news outlet The Standard.Mbadi stressed a need for a regulatory framework to both capitalize on the potential benefits of the industry while mitigating the risks posed by money laundering, terrorism financing and fraud.“The Government of Kenya is committed to creating the necessary legal and regulatory framework in order to leverage opportunities presented by VAs and VASPs while managing the...

Babylon Labs, developer of the largest BTC staking protocol, is building a trust-minimized Bitcoin bridge with the Cosmos network to enhance the world's oldest blockchain's interoperability. In partnership with Bitcoin developers Fiamma, Babylon is using the BitVM2 computing paradigm, which is designed to allow Ethereum-style smart contracts on Bitcoin, which then paves the way for zero-knowledge technology.Zero-knowledge computations allow different parties to verify that information is accurate without actually revealing to each other what the information is. In this sense, it is foundational to bridging digital assets between different blockchains.Developers like Babylon Labs and Fiamma are aiming to unlock the deep wells of value stored in BTC to finance other ecosystems and allow it to be transacted on blockchains that...