New crypto wallets, stablecoin integrations, major industry investments, tax evasion, crypto scams and endorsement scandals – all these and more can be found in this brief crypto news digest.
Crypto Exchanges Accelerate Defences as AI Exploits Software Flows
Once Anthropic revealed alarming findings of its Claude Mythos unreleased model, global companies started paying more attention to their software layers. Crypto exchanges are growing hypervigilant as well. Today, major cryptocurrency exchanges and custodians, e.g, Coinbase and Binance, are preparing their trading and asset custody ecosystems for powerful AI models that could not only easily find but also exploit software vulnerabilities in practically any existing website. Reportedly, Coinbase Chief Security Officer Philip Martin has been in close communication with Anthropic about Mythos. However, the AI developer has not yet included any major crypto firm in its Project Glasswing initiative that lets tech giant proactively defend against AI threats.
Tether Launches Crypto Wallet, Surprisingly Not Only for Stablecoins
The stablecoin issuer Tether, that sees its flagship asset USDT regularly top stablecoin lists with its $185B market cap, has launched a proprietary crypto wallet. It lets users send and receive not only digital dollars (which was clearly expected), but also tokenized gold and bitcoin without intermediaries. The wallet also enables handling of different gas tokens across multiple blockchains.
“Tether has achieved, without any doubts, the widest financial inclusion success story in the history of humanity. With more than 570 million people already using Tether’s technology, the next step is making that digital infrastructure even more accessible and usable by the end users. The objective is to remove the complexity that has prevented broader adoption while preserving the properties that make the digital assets technology valuable. Users should be able to send value as easily as sending a message, without relying on intermediaries and without giving up control of their assets.”
Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether
Elon Musk Wants to “Fix” Crypto as X Launches Cashtags Feature for Crypto and Stock Trading Info
Elon Musk’s recent X posts along with the comments of Nikita Bier, the head of product at X, led to the speculations around billionnaire’s quiet backing of some cryptocurrency product. While the crypto community wonders what his “true currency” reference actually means, Musk’s social media platform X is rolling out the “Cashtags” tool. The new embedded feature aims to make X “best source of financial news for traders and investors”. Already available to the US and Canada X users on iPhone, Cashtags is bringing real-time financial data for matching stocks or crypto tokens when people search for them on X.
About Half of U.S. Cryptocurrency Investors May be Ditching Taxes Says Research
Tyler Menzer, an assistant professor in the accounting department at the Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University, has gotten access to the IRS’s anonymized data on millions of tax filers to conduct research on crypto tax payers. Though between 12% and 21% of US adults had owned cryptocurrency through 2021, Menzer and his colleagues calculated that only 6.5% reported their cryptocurrency sales to the IRS. Besides, the profiles of those who did report crypto sales on their tax returns greatly differed from what you would expect from traditional stock investors. Crypto traders also seemed to more frequently sell their holdings without any regard for tax implications.
“Cryptocurrency owners are more likely to own meme stocks than other investors,” Menzer said in an interview quoted by Bloomberg. “They are younger, they may be a little bit lower income. But the takeaway from our paper is this is a distinct group of taxpayers, of investors. They were trading differently, maybe had different compliance characteristics. A lot of people were probably not reporting their holdings to the IRS.”
IRS and adjacent regulatory bodies have been developing crypto taxing agenda for a few years now. In 2023, IRS rolled out its taxation rules for those getting income from crypto staking along with a proposal on taxing the sale and exchange of digital assets by brokers. In 2026, the regulator is stepping up its reporting requirements, pushing crypto toward a similar regime as equities.
US Treasury Suggests Stablecoin Issuers Should be Subject to Secondary Market Sanctions Compliance
On April 8, the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) jointly released a long-awaited notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) proposing permitted payment stablecoin issuers (PPSIs) to adhere to GENIUS act requirements related to combatting illicit finance. U.S. regulators believe stablecoins need robust legal oversight similar to TradFi monitoring, since they see these crypto assets integrated into the broader financial system rather than musing upon earlier CBDC ideas that are not effectively outlawed.
In Denmark, Crypto Is Even Less Popular Than Cash
Despite their mainstream adoption of digital payment methods (only about 8% of all in-store payments in Denmark are settled with cash), Danish population is particularly indifferent to crypto. The latest research from Danmarks Nationalbank shows that only 4% of citizens in Denmark own crypto-assets, and the vast majority have small digital asset holdings of less than DKK 10,000 (about $1575). To compare, cryptocurrency ownership in the Philippines is near 23%, though the country is only 9th in the global crypto adoption rating. At the same time, Danish holdings of securities linked to crypto-assets have increased since 2023, points out the local regulator.
Dubai Shifts Crypto Token Assesment Responsibility to Businesses in New DIFC Rules
Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) has issued additional guidance on its updated crypto token regime, affecting companies operating in the DIFC – Dubai International Financial Centre. One of the main changes is replacement of the concept of ‘recognised crypto tokens’ with ‘suitable crypto tokens’. The DFSA will no longer maintain a list of recognised crypto tokens. Instead, every individual firm shall conduct its own analysis to determine whether a crypto token is suitable for its activities. Some aspects required to be factored in include: token purpose, platform origin and credibility, crypto’s legal status in other jurisdictions, technology behind it, token premises contradicting DFSA compliance requirements, market size, liquidity and trading history of the token, etc.
Fake Ledger App Brings $9 Million USD Losses to Mac App Store Users
About 50 users who downloaded a fake Ledger Live app from the Mac App Store collectively lost about $9 million to a new cryptocurrency scam scheme. The criminals stole crypto funds like Bitcoin, Solana, and XRP impersonating Ledger’s self-custody software. One of the scammers’ victims was musician G. Love who lost more than $400,000 in Bitcoin to the scheme. Criminals exploited the pretend Ledger storage for about a week in April, before the app was removed from the Apple App Store. “Stolen funds were laundered via 150+ KuCoin deposit addresses tied to AudiA6, a centralized mixing service that charges high fees to launder illicit funds,” reported ZachXBT who conducted some research on the incident.
Argentina’s Crypto Appetite Declines After Javier Milei’s Bribery Scandal
The Guardian reports that Argentinian president, Javier Milei, is now at his lowest approval level as fresh evidence allegedly reveals his $5m financial agreement for the last year’s public endorsement of a controversial $Libra token crypto project. The scandal affected not only the politician himself but also the general crypto stance in the country, causing more people to doubt crypto assets legitimacy and efficiency.
SocGen Expands Its USD Stablecoin Reach With MetaMask Integration
Societe Generale-FORGE is making its USD CoinVertible token available on self-custodial crypto wallet MetaMask through a partnership with blockchain firm Consensys. Now, millions of people who use one of the most popular crypto wallets can use Societe Generale’s token on the thousands of blockchain applications connected to the wallet. In addition, the USD CoinVertible integration will allow MetaMask users to convert fiat into stablecoins to further trade crypto assets or pay blockchain transaction fees with the blockchain-native tokens. Earlier, SocGen boosted its stablecoin’s real-world utility with its integration as a settlement instrument for securities processes, collateral management, and treasury functions at Deutsche Börse.
