Crypto World
New Epstein files reveal contact with Bitcoin dev Andresen before CIA briefing
New emails released by the US Justice Department as part of its Epstein Files disclosures reveal that Jeffrey Epstein spoke with Gavin Andresen two days prior to Andresen visiting the CIA headquarters to discuss Bitcoin in June 2011.
Andresen was the successor to Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. Nakamoto personally chose Andresen to be the lead maintainer of Bitcoin development and gave him Commit key access.
The newly disclosed sequence of events is remarkably coincidental.
Nakamoto retired on April 26, 2011, one day before Andresen announced that he was going to speak about Bitcoin at the CIA headquarters in June.
Although Nakamoto never blamed Andresen’s decision for prompting his retirement, there’s widespread speculation that he was unhappy about Andresen attracting government attention to Bitcoin development.
Despite Nakamoto’s resignation, Andresen followed-through on his controversial April promise, speaking at the CIA headquarters on June 14, 2011 to discuss Bitcoin.
The week before, on June 6, tech reporter and socialite Jason Calacanis responded to an email from Epstein, promising to send along Andresen’s contact information.
“I would like to get in touch with the Bitcoin guys,” Epstein emailed Calacanis eight days before Andresen’s CIA meeting.
Two days before his CIA speech, Epstein spoke with Andresen
On June 12, 2011, two days before his CIA appointment, Epstein emailed Andresen, asking for a phone call.
Read more: Why Satoshi Nakamoto’s gigantic Bitcoin stash is probably lost forever
Whether Epstein’s discussions with Andresen involved the CIA is difficult to determine based on their correspondence.
Indeed, the emails simply indicate their intention to speak on the phone, and the timing of their discussions might have been coincidental with the timing of the CIA meeting.
Moreover, interest in bitcoin was exploding in the first half of 2011 and it had rallied 8,000% from $0.30 to over $24 during the first six months of the year.
Exchanges like MtGox and BitcoinMarket were operational, and upstarts like Britcoin, Bitcoin Brazil, VirWoX, and Bitomat also launched.
Still, Epstein’s involvement with intelligence agencies like the CIA is also a matter of public speculation.
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Onchain evidence was key to securing the conviction of three individuals for terrorism financing in Indonesia in 2024 and 2025, reflecting a clear shift in the way courts value onchain evidence.
“Indonesian courts have demonstrated that cryptocurrency evidence — wallet addresses, transaction histories, on-chain flows — is not only admissible but can anchor a terrorism financing prosecution,” TRM said in a statement Sunday.
TRM said terrorism financing networks have preferred cryptocurrency as a mechanism of choice to move money, as authorities and regulators have been slow to treat it with the same level of scrutiny as traditional fiat channels, but noted that this is now changing.
Indonesian authorities traced one defendant sending more than $49,000 worth of USDt (USDT) across 15 transactions from a local exchange to a foreign platform, with the funds later routed to an ISIS-linked terrorism fundraising campaign in Syria, according to the blockchain firm.
Indonesia’s financial intelligence team and its counterterrorism police unit, Densus 88, carried out the analysis and presented the findings to Indonesian courts, which accepted the blockchain data as key evidence in each of the three cases.
Indonesia is not the only country in Southeast Asia using blockchain analytics to catch criminals, TRM said.
“Similar patterns are emerging across Southeast Asia, where governments are investing in blockchain intelligence capabilities and enhancing collaboration between public and private sectors to address illicit finance risks.”
TRM Labs said that Singapore and Malaysia’s financial intelligence units and law enforcement agencies are also building the technical capacity to trace cryptocurrency flows.
Related: Drift Protocol says $280M exploit took ‘months of deliberate preparation’
On April 1, Cambodian and Chinese officials captured Li Xiong, a leader of the Huione Group, an organization that served scam centers in Cambodia that carried out “pig butchering” frauds and other investment schemes to steal crypto from victims around the world.
Xiong was extradited to China, where he is set to face fraud and money-laundering charges.
His extradition came three months after the arrest of Chen Zhi, the head of Prince Group, which operates Huione Group.
TRM reported in February that illicit entities received about $141 billion worth of stablecoins in 2025, marking a five-year high.
Magazine: Are DeFi devs liable for the illegal activity of others on their platforms?
Iran reportedly struck Jubail Industrial City in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province on April 7.
According to media reports, Iranian ballistic missiles and drones sparked large fires at the site. Jubail is one of the world’s largest industrial hubs and a cornerstone of Saudi Arabia’s petrochemical sector.
“Jubail and Yanbu (where Saudi has its second largest petrochemical complex) account for 85% of Saudi Arabia’s non-oil exports,” Theti Mapping wrote.
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According to Drop Site, an adviser to Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf posted on X that Tehran considers Saudi Arabia a “main instigator” alongside Israel. The advisor warned that,
“The damage it will inflict on Saudi Arabia and bin Salman’s financial partners in the Trump family is beyond calculation.”
What Iran’s Counter-Proposal Contains
Meanwhile, Iran has formally rejected Washington’s 15-point peace plan with a 10-point counter-framework.
The counter-framework conditions any deal on security guarantees against future attacks, a permanent end to the war, Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, and full US sanctions relief.
Tehran also proposed reopening Hormuz in exchange for those concessions, but attached a $2 million-per-ship transit fee split with Oman. Iran would direct Hormuz fee revenues toward reconstruction rather than accepting formal war reparations.
The twin moves signal Tehran’s intent to negotiate from a position of strength, even as President Trump’s 8 PM ET Tuesday deadline for reopening the Strait of Hormuz approaches.
“Iran has clearly and overtly won the war and will only accept an ending that consolidates its gains and creates a new security regime in the region. The true state of affairs is this: it is Trump who has about 20 hours to either surrender to Iran or his allies will return to the Stone Age. We will not back down!” Mahdi Mohammadi, strategic adviser to Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, posted.
Polymarket traders continue to price slim odds on a near-term US-Iran ceasefire. The prediction platform assigns only a 3% chance of that happening by April 7.
The market impact of the latest escalation is clearly visible. Bitcoin (BTC) dipped roughly 2% to around $68,500 in early Tuesday. At the same time, Brent crude jumped over 1% past $111. Gold fell 0.54%, and silver dropped 1.1%.
US equity indices, however, held relatively stronger, with the Nasdaq Composite, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Russell 2000 all posting modest gains.
Whether Tehran’s gambit forces a diplomatic breakthrough or triggers the infrastructure strikes Trump promised will likely become clear within hours.
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The post Iran Strikes Saudi Arabia’s Al Jubail Hours Before Trump’s Hormuz Deadline appeared first on BeInCrypto.
The Polygon Foundation confirmed the Giugliano hardfork will activate on mainnet at block 85,268,500, roughly 2 p.m. UTC on April 8.
The upgrade targets faster finality and improved fee transparency as part of the network’s broader push toward higher throughput for payments and tokenized assets.
What the Giugliano Upgrade Changes
The hardfork allows block producers to announce blocks earlier, reducing the time users wait for transaction confirmation to become irreversible.
Testing on the Amoy testnet last month showed a roughly two-second improvement in finality time.
Giugliano also embeds EIP-1559-style fee parameters directly into block headers. This gives developers and applications more efficient access to gas pricing data at the protocol level.
New Remote Procedure Call (RPC) endpoints accompany the fee changes. These let wallets and decentralized applications query fee information without relying on external estimations.
“This upgrade enables faster finality by letting producers announce blocks earlier, adds fee parameters directly in block headers, and introduces new RPC support for fee data,” Polygon shared.
Node operators must update Bor to v2.7.0 or Erigon to v3.5.0 before the activation block. Regular users and developers do not need to take any action.
A Stability Push After a Rough 2025
The upgrade arrives after a turbulent stretch for Polygon (POL) network reliability. In September 2025, a consensus bug caused finality delays of up to 15 minutes, prompting an emergency hard fork to restore normal operations.
Two months earlier, a validator exit triggered a bug in the Heimdall consensus layer that halted finality for roughly one hour.
Since then, the team has shipped several hardforks to tighten stability. The Madhugiri upgrade in December 2025 raised throughput to approximately 1,400 transactions per second.
The Lisovo hardfork in March 2026 added improvements to smart contract reliability and subsidized gas for AI agent transactions.
Part of the Gigagas Vision
Giugliano fits within Polygon’s Gigagas roadmap, announced in June 2025, which targets 100,000 TPS for global-scale payments and real-world asset settlement.
The phased plan began with the Bhilai upgrade in July 2025, which boosted throughput to over 1,000 TPS and reduced finality from over 60 seconds to roughly 5.
The network now processes around 2,600 TPS, with internal devnets reportedly hitting above 5,000. Whether faster finality and better fee tooling translate into sustained usage growth will depend on post-upgrade network data in the coming weeks.
Despite anticipation for the harfork, Polygon’s powering token, POL, was down by almost 5%, trading for $0.09003 as of this writing.
The post Polygon’s Giugliano Hardfork Signals a Stability Push After a Rough 2025 appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Crypto World
Bitcoin miners face a new rival for cheap power as Anthropic signs multi-gigawatt compute deal
Anthropic has announced a partnership with Google and Broadcom for “multiple gigawatts” of next-generation TPU compute capacity expected to come online starting in 2027, a commitment the company called its most significant to date as revenue growth accelerated to a $30 billion annual run rate from $9 billion at the end of 2025.
The scale of AI compute demand is now competing directly with bitcoin mining for the same scarce resources — grid connections, land permits, cooling infrastructure, and cheap electricity.
We’ve signed an agreement with Google and Broadcom for multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity, coming online starting in 2027, to train and serve frontier Claude models.
— Anthropic (@AnthropicAI) April 6, 2026
A Cambridge tracker estimates bitcoin mining draws roughly 13 to 25 gigawatts of continuous power globally depending on hardware efficiency assumptions.
Anthropic securing multiple gigawatts from a single deal, on top of existing capacity across AWS Trainium, Google TPUs, and Nvidia GPUs, shows just how quickly AI is becoming a peer-level competitor for the same energy infrastructure that miners depend on.
And Anthropic is one company. OpenAI, which raised $122 billion last week and described compute as a “strategic moat,” is building across an even wider infrastructure portfolio spanning five cloud providers and four chip platforms.
The aggregate AI compute buildout now represents one of the largest sources of new electricity demand in the United States, arriving at the same moment bitcoin miners are deciding whether to mine bitcoin or rent their infrastructure to AI companies.
That decision is increasingly going one direction. Core Scientific converted a significant portion of its mining capacity to AI hosting through a deal with CoreWeave. Iris Energy and Hut 8 have expanded their AI and high-performance computing revenue. Riot Platforms, MARA Holdings, and Genius Group disclosed selling more than 19,000 BTC from their treasuries last week, a sign that mining economics alone are not sustaining operations at current prices and difficulty levels.
A bitcoin miner running a gigawatt of capacity earns revenue that fluctuates with bitcoin’s price and network difficulty. The same gigawatt rented to an AI company earns a contracted rate with predictable cash flows.
At $69,000 bitcoin with difficulty at all-time highs and energy costs rising alongside every other industrial consumer competing for the same grid capacity, the AI rental often pays better.
The revenue numbers behind the expansion tell their own story. Anthropic said the number of business customers spending more than $1 million annually on Claude has doubled from 500 to over 1,000 in less than two months.
None of this means bitcoin mining is dying, however. The network’s hashrate continues to hit record levels above 1 zetahash per second.
But the miners who survive the current cycle may look less like energy companies that produce bitcoin and more like infrastructure companies that happen to mine bitcoin on the side while renting their real asset, cheap power at scale, to an AI industry that cannot build data centers fast enough.
The Solana Foundation on Monday announced a new security auditing framework for Solana-based protocols in addition to an incident-response network, warning that “adversaries are rapidly innovating.”
The Solana Foundation, a Swiss organization that supports the adoption and security of Solana, and Web3 security firm Asymmetric Research unveiled the Solana Trust, Resilience and Infrastructure for DeFi Enterprises (STRIDE), stating that it was a “structured program for evaluating, monitoring and escalating security across Solana projects.”
The initiative works to evaluate the security of protocols across eight pillars: program security, governance and access control, oracle and dependency risk, infrastructure security, supply chain security, operational security, monitoring and incident response, as well as log management and forensics.
Protocols are independently assessed against these requirements, with findings published publicly, said Asymmetric Research. “This gives users, investors, and the broader ecosystem real transparency into the security posture of the protocols they interact with.”
The announcement comes just a week after one of the largest DeFi exploits this year, with the Drift Protocol losing around $280 million following a social engineering attack from North Korean-linked threat actors.
Solana Incident Response Network
The Solana Foundation also announced the Solana Incident Response Network (SIRN), a network of security firms for real-time incident response across the Solana ecosystem.
“Members will share threat intelligence, coordinate responses to active incidents, and contribute to the ongoing evolution of the STRIDE framework,” it stated.
Related: Crypto hackers steal $169M from 34 DeFi protocols in Q1: DefiLlama
The foundation did not mention artificial-intelligence agents directly, but the announcement comes at a time when they are becoming an increasing threat to crypto protocols.
In January, $40 million was drained from the Solana DeFi platform Step Finance, with AI agents amplifying the damage by executing large transfers autonomously, KuCoin reported last week.
Attackers hit 34 DeFi protocols in Q1
Malicious actors stole over $168 million in cryptocurrency from 34 DeFi protocols in the first quarter of 2026, according to data from DefiLlama.
However, the figure has fallen significantly from the same period last year, when $1.58 billion was pilfered in Q1, 2025.
The largest exploit for the period was the private key compromise of Step Finance.
Magazine: No more 85% Bitcoin collapses, Taiwan needs BTC war reserve: Hodler’s Digest
Newly uncovered call logs suggest Argentine President Javier Milei spoke with one of the entrepreneurs behind the Libra token multiple times on the night he promoted the cryptocurrency, raising questions about Milei’s assertion that he had no connection with the project.
According to logs obtained by Argentine prosecutors investigating the token’s collapse, which were seen by The New York Times, there were reportedly a total of seven phone calls between the unnamed entrepreneur and Milei before and after he made his Libra promotion post on X.
The contents of those calls remain unknown, according to the Times.
The collapse of the Libra token has seen Argentine lawyers hit Milei with fraud charges and there were also calls for his impeachment. Fraud can attract a prison sentence of between one month and six years in Argentina.
Cointelegraph has contacted Argentina’s presidential office for comment.
Libra investors lost at least $251 million
In February 2025, Milei made a post on X promoting the Libra token as a way to grow Argentina’s economy by funding small businesses and startups.
The token surged before losing more than 96% of its value from its peak, costing investors around $251 million. Milei later deleted his posts, prompting accusations of a possible rug pull.
Milei has denied any wrongdoing in promoting the short-lived token, saying he was merely highlighting a private venture and had no involvement in the project.
“A few hours ago, I posted a tweet, like so many infinite other times, supporting an alleged private venture with which I obviously have no connection whatsoever,” he said in a post on X.
“I wasn’t aware of the details of the project, and after becoming aware of them, I decided not to keep promoting it, that’s why I deleted the tweet.”
Federal investigation into Libra collapse ongoing
Following the Libra collapse, federal prosecutors launched an investigation that has named Milei as a person of interest. The case remains ongoing.
Argentina’s Anti-Corruption Office cleared Milei last June of violating public ethics rules and found his post was personal rather than in his capacity as president.
Related: Argentina turns up the heat in Libra scandal with sweeping asset freeze
In a recent March update, a judicial investigation uncovered a draft document on crypto lobbyist Mauricio Novelli’s phone suggesting a possible $5 million agreement connected to Milei’s promotion of the Libra token.
The draft note was reportedly written just three days before Milei posted about the Libra token on X, but it does not specify who would receive the funds.
Magazine: Bitcoin may take 7 years to upgrade to post-quantum — BIP-360 co-author
The proposal includes a startup exemption, a fundraising exemption and an investment contract safe harbor for issuers.
US Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins has revealed that a key crypto market safe harbor proposal has landed at the White House for review.
Speaking at the Digital Assets and Emerging Technology Policy Summit on Monday, Atkins said the Regulation Crypto Assets proposal — outlined by the SEC in mid-March — has now been submitted to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
“We will have reg crypto that we will be proposing here shortly. It’s in fact at OIRA right now, which is the next step before being published,” he said.
Regulation Crypto Assets covers three main ideas: a startup exemption, a fundraising exemption and an investment contract safe harbor for issuers.
If the proposal does end up becoming official rules as part of the SEC’s oversight, it could drive more crypto innovation in the US while providing further regulatory clarity for the industry.
Atkins emphasized that the SEC wants to “hear from the marketplace” to make the whole package “workable.” He did not go into many specifics but said there were a few things the SEC is “building into it” alongside measures such as crypto safe harbors and exemptive relief.
SEC proposal is taking shape
Generally, the SEC first votes to approve a formal proposal, which is then sent to OIRA for review. OIRA then completes the review and it is published in the Federal Register and put up for public feedback.
Cointelegraph reached out to the SEC for comment on the matter.
Related: CFTC chief launches innovation task force focused on crypto framework
The startup exemption would enable projects to raise up to a defined amount over a four-year period with softer disclosure requirements, while the fundraising exemption would enable issuers to raise a defined amount over 12 months while “retaining the ability to rely on other exemptions from registration under the federal securities laws.”
The investment contract safe harbor would protect certain assets from the definition of a security once the project team has ceased all of its managerial efforts “represented or promised” as part of the investment contract.
Chaos Labs has parted ways with Aave after three years of serving as the crypto lending protocol’s primary risk service provider, citing a budget dispute and fundamental disagreements over how risk should be managed. The rupture signals a notable inflection point in DeFi risk governance as Aave advances its V4 migration and navigates ongoing governance tensions within its ecosystem.
Chaos founder Omer Goldberg announced the decision on X, stressing that the move was deliberate and not made in haste. He said Aave Labs was willing to raise its budget to $5 million, but that the engagement “no longer reflected how we believe risk should be managed.” Aave Labs CEO Stani Kulechov offered a different framing, describing Chaos’s departure as the result of a push by Chaos to become the sole risk provider and to replace other partner models. Aave’s stance, the two sides said, remains professional; Chaos did not depart on acrimony, but the parties simply could not reconcile their risk-management philosophies.
Key takeaways
- Chaos Labs exits after a three-year engagement as Aave’s main risk service provider, citing a budget dispute and diverging views on risk management.
- The split underscores tensions between a single-provider model and a two-layer risk framework that Aave maintains, with Chaos allegedly seeking to replace Chainlink’s oracles and other partners.
- Aave assures that the departure has not disrupted its protocol, smart contracts, or listings, while signaling it will continue working with LlamaRisk during the transition.
- The move comes amid broader governance frictions within Aave Labs over funding and revenue control, and just weeks after a notable risk incident fueled calls for stronger safeguards.
What triggered Chaos Labs’ departure from Aave
Chaos Labs has been a cornerstone of Aave’s risk infrastructure since November 2022, handling pricing, risk assessment, and related guardrails across Aave’s V2 and V3 markets. In that period, Aave’s total value locked expanded markedly, underscoring the centrality of robust risk tooling to the protocol’s growth. By late February, Aave had crossed a historic milestone in lending activity, with cumulative lending volume advancing past the trillion-dollar mark, a milestone the project highlighted as a first for the DeFi sector.
Goldberg framed the decision as one driven by a misalignment over risk management and the scope of Chaos’s duties. “This decision was not made in haste,” he stated in a post to X. “We worked in good faith with DAO contributors. Aave Labs was professional and supported increasing our budget to $5m to retain us. However, we are leaving because the engagement no longer reflects how we believe risk should be managed.”
Aave’s account of the dispute diverges on what Chaos was seeking. Stani Kulechov contended that Chaos sought to become the sole risk manager and to substitute Chaos’s price oracles for Chainlink—an approach that would have effectively sidelined other risk partners and compromised Aave’s established two-layer risk model. Chaos’s proposal, Kulechov suggested, would have forced Aave to abandon its multi-provider framework, a move the protocol did not accept. Chaos later indicated it was examining winding down its risk consultancy, even as Aave reportedly offered to double the compensation to keep Chaos onboard.
Beyond the personnel dynamics, the departure arrives at a moment of heightened sensitivity around risk in Aave’s community. The ecosystem has recently grappled with high-profile events that tested the resilience of its risk tools, including a $50 million loss traced to a user interacting with Aave’s interface on March 12. In response, Aave rolled out a shielded risk feature designed to deter high-risk trading behavior, signaling a public push to bolster user safeguards even as internal governance wrestles with funding and control questions.
Risk architecture at stake: Chaos’s demands vs. Aave’s model
At the heart of the disagreement is Aave’s two-layer economic risk model, which blends on-chain risk pricing with external risk data. Chaos has been integrated into the back end of that risk framework, providing pricing and risk management services that supported V2 and V3 liquidity and lending operations. The move toward a broader, multi-provider risk architecture—anchored by partners like Chainlink—was a core feature of Aave’s design philosophy as it expanded and upgraded to V4.
Goldberg argued that Chaos’s push to become the sole risk provider, coupled with a desire to substitute its price oracles for Chainlink’s, would have undermined the protocol’s diversification of risk inputs. Kulechov, conversely, stressed that Chaos’s demand would displace established partners and thrust Chaos into a governance role that Aave does not appear prepared to concede. The exchange underscores a broader tension in DeFi: how to balance centralized expertise with multi-source resilience in a rapidly evolving risk landscape.
In practical terms, the split leaves Aave poised to continue with LlamaRisk and other risk partners as it advances V4 and maintains its two-layer model. Chaos had suggested it could take on a more centralized risk-management posture, but Aave’s leadership signaled a preference for a governance-driven, multi-vendor approach, particularly as the platform expands its risk surface with new features and markets. The dispute also highlights a broader industry question: what responsibilities do risk managers owe when a protocol experiences a failure, and who bears the blame when risk controls falter?
Operational realities of the migration and broader implications
The timing of Chaos’s exit aligns with Aave’s ongoing transition from V3 toward V4, a process that executives warned could stretch over months or even years as liquidity and markets migrate and the new feature set is absorbed into existing ecosystems. Goldberg noted that ongoing operations would require maintaining both V3 and V4 during the migration window, a workload that can be substantial for any risk provider. He warned that without clear safety harbors or settled legal precedents, risk governance remains an area of ambiguity with real consequences when things go wrong.
Kulechov framed the disruption as manageable and non-disruptive to Aave’s immediate operations. He emphasized that Chaos’s departure did not affect Aave’s smart contracts, token listings, or network integrations, and that the protocol would continue collaboration with LlamaRisk to ensure a smooth transition. The episode sits against a backdrop of ongoing governance debates about funding and revenue allocation within Aave Labs, a debate that has punctuated discussions about how the DAO should remunerate development and risk oversight in a high-growth, capital-intensive ecosystem.
For users and investors watching the DeFi risk space, the episode underscores two distinct strands: the push for diversified risk inputs that mitigate single points of failure, and the practical realities of a multi-year migration that tests the stamina of risk tooling and governance structures. The fact that Aave achieved a meaningful lending-volume milestone while navigating this internal shift demonstrates the resilience of its ecosystem, but it also raises questions about the pace of migration and the potential for further shuffles among risk partners as V4 scales.
Cointelegraph’s coverage of related risk and governance developments provides broader context for these tensions. For instance, Aave’s response to the March incident and the subsequent shield feature was part of a wider market emphasis on user protection and risk-aware design. The departure also sits within the wider narrative of DeFi risk management evolving from boutique, single-provider arrangements toward resilient, multi-provider ecosystems that can weather shocks and governance disputes alike.
As Aave moves forward, the roadmap will hinge on how smoothly LlamaRisk can integrate and how quickly the V4 platform absorbs legacy markets and liquidity from V3. Chaos’s exit, while financially notable—the firm had been engaged at a $5 million level—illustrates the bargaining power that risk providers can wield in a high-stakes DeFi environment and the lengthier arc of governance negotiations that can accompany critical infrastructure changes.
For readers tracking the real-world implications, the key questions are clear: will Aave maintain a diversified, resilient risk framework as V4 expands? How quickly will the migration reduce the operational overlap between V3 and V4? And what lessons will the DeFi community draw about risk governance, budgeting, and partnerships from this high-profile split?
Investors and developers should watch for updates on Aave’s transition timeline, any new risk-partner arrangements, and how the community approaches risk coverage as V4 matures. The coming months will reveal whether the industry’s move toward multi-provider risk management proves more robust in practice, or if further shifts among top risk suppliers test the protocol’s continuity and user protection standards.
In the meantime, Aave’s leadership reiterated its commitment to maintaining its two-layer risk model and to working with partners—including LlamaRisk—to ensure a seamless transition. The episode also reinforces the broader industry takeaway that risk management in DeFi remains a live, evolving discipline—one where governance choices, partner ecosystems, and architectural design all shape the safety and reliability that users rely on every day.
Readers can follow ongoing developments as Aave navigates V4 integration and the evolving risk landscape, including how new safeguards and partner arrangements influence user experience, security, and the protocol’s long-term resilience.
Related coverage: Aave’s shield initiative after a high-profile loss, and discussions around risk provision and governance within DeFi ecosystems, offer useful context for evaluating how this split may influence future risk partnerships and platform upgrades. Aave Shield rollout and ongoing governance debates illuminate the environment in which Chaos and Aave operated.
Bitcoin pulled back to $68,589 in Asian hours Tuesday after Monday’s ceasefire-driven rally faded, as U.S. president Donald Trump set a Tuesday night deadline for Iran to agree to a deal and threatened to destroy “every bridge in Iran by 12 o’clock tomorrow night” if it does not.
The largest cryptocurrency is down 0.6% over 24 hours after touching $69,350 on Monday, when an Axios report about a potential 45-day ceasefire briefly pushed prices above $69,000. That optimism lasted about 12 hours. Ether fell 1% to $2,104, solana’s SOL dropped 2.7% to $79.75, XRP lost 1.6% to $1.32, and dogecoin slid 2.2% to $0.09. BNB held relatively flat at $598.
The pattern of the past six weeks continued in textbook fashion, where positive headlines breifly boost prices before negative comments cull any chances of extended recovery.
“This move looks less like a shift in fundamentals and more like positioning getting caught offsides,” said Diana Pires, chief business officer at sFOX. “Heading into the weekend, sentiment was heavily skewed bearish and short interest had built up across the market. Once ceasefire headlines hit, that positioning had to unwind.”
Monday’s bounce produced $196.7 million in short liquidations as bearish traders got caught by the ceasefire report. Tuesday’s pullback arrived when Iran reportedly passed to mediator Pakistan a rejection of the ceasefire proposal, demanding a permanent end to the war, lifting of sanctions, and reconstruction efforts in addition to safe passage through Hormuz.
U.S. crude climbed above $112 as Trump warned the military could put every power plant in Iran “out of business” if no deal is reached, even as he said talks were “going well.” Brent traded near $115.66, up 2.9% on the session. Elsehwhere, the S&P 500 posted its longest advance since January despite the whipsaw, with equities managing to hold small gains through the volatility.
The macro backdrop remains uncertain. U.S. services data showed the economy expanded at a slower pace in March, employment contracted at the sharpest rate since 2023, and input prices accelerated, a mix that gives the Fed no clear reason to cut or hold. Key inflation readings this week will add to the picture.
Bitcoin remains inside the $65,000 to $73,000 range it has traded in for the entirety of the conflict. Every rally has failed at the upper bound, every selloff has held the lower. What happens by midnight Tuesday, when Trump’s deadline arrives, will determine which end of that range gets tested next.
Buy, hold, wait – that’s what most Bitcoin holders do, really.
After all, this is what makes the most sense when the goal is to gain exposure to an asset that investors believe will appreciate over time.
But as Bitcoin matures, that logic starts to feel somewhat incomplete. Holding may preserve upside, yet it does little to address the practical need for liquidity when real-life expenses arise. Selling Bitcoin can unlock cash, but it also means cutting into a position that may have taken years to build.
An alternative that is gaining attention is using Bitcoin not only as something to store, but as an asset that can support borrowing, spending, and measured income generation without fully exiting the trade.
That is the space Xapo Bank is trying to occupy. The bank advertises itself as a premium Bitcoin-and-USD platform built for members who want more than a wallet or exchange account, pairing services such as Bitcoin-backed loans, global spending tools, and yield-oriented products under one membership model.
Let’s explore how it works in more detail.
Using BTC as Collateral Instead of Selling It
For a long-term Bitcoin holder, selling is rarely the ideal solution. It may solve a short-term cash need, but it also reduces exposure to an asset many investors still see as a core long-term position.
That is why Bitcoin-backed borrowing has become a more compelling option for a certain class of holder – it allows them to unlock liquidity without fully exiting the market. Instead of selling BTC outright, they can use it as collateral and access cash while keeping the underlying position intact.
This is one of the central ideas behind Xapo Bank’s lending offering. The bank allows eligible members to borrow against their Bitcoin, with loans of up to $1 million and cash delivered in minutes through the app, depending on the amount of collateral posted.
Xapo says members can borrow up to 40% of their BTC value, choose flexible repayment periods, and repay early without penalty. Just as importantly, the bank frames this as a more conservative lending model than many crypto users grew used to in previous cycles.
According to Xapo, collateral remains segregated and is not rehypothecated, a distinction that carries more weight after the collapses of lending platforms that treated customer assets as fuel for broader risk-taking.
The loan becomes about access – covering a major purchase, bridging a cash-flow gap, or funding a large expense without having to dismantle a long-term Bitcoin position.
The Spending Layer
Liquidity needs to move with you. Borrowing against Bitcoin might help a holder avoid selling, but for the model to feel practical, those funds need to be usable in everyday life.
Xapo places its card right next to its loan product, allowing members to spend from BTC or USD balances globally, with zero foreign exchange fees on card spending, an ultra-low 0.1% spread when spending from Bitcoin, and cashback paid in BTC on qualifying purchases. The reward rate can reach up to 1%, although in the EEA, Switzerland, and the UK, where interchange fees are capped, cashback is lower at 0.2%.
The loan provides access to liquidity without forcing a sale, while the card helps that liquidity function in the real world.
And yes, the company offers a metal card, if you want it.
How Xapo Frames Earning on BTC
For many Bitcoin holders, there’s an opportunity cost to letting an asset sit completely still.
As the Bitcoin investor base matures and starts thinking less about short-term price action and more about long-term portfolio function, ‘earning on your Bitcoin’ is suddenly trending. The appeal, however, isn’t in taking on opaque counterparty risk. Instead, it lies in simpler, more hands-off and conservative ways to grow a BTC position over time.
Xapo’s pitch leans in directly. Instead of presenting yield as something aggressive or experimental, it frames earning as part of a broader wealth-management model for Bitcoin holders who want their assets to do more than just appreciate in price.
That model rests on a few straightforward building blocks:
- Up to 4% APY, paid in BTC, on Bitcoin-denominated investments;
- 3.35% APY, paid in BTC, on USD deposits;
- Up to 1% cashback in Bitcoin on eligible card purchases.
The goal is to create several steady paths for accumulating more sats over time – something attractive for users who have little interest in micromanaging positions or moving funds through a maze of DeFi protocols.
A Welcome Development After Crypto’s Yield Blowups
Crypto users have already seen what happens when earning turns into a euphemism for hidden risk.
Over the past few years, a wide range of lending and yield platforms promised easy returns on digital assets, only for many of those models to unravel under stress. The broader lesson was not that all yield is inherently dangerous, but that the source of the yield, the custody model, and the treatment of client assets matter far more than the headline number.
Even mainstream policy and stability analysis now separates centralised crypto lenders from other parts of the digital-asset ecosystem because of the specific liquidity, maturity, and asset-use risks they introduced. That is exactly the backdrop against which platforms like Xapo are trying to refine a more disciplined crypto wealth model.
Xapo’s positioning is deliberately aimed at that post-blowup audience. Instead of leaning on aggressive returns, it emphasises segregated collateral, a non-rehypothecation model for Bitcoin-backed loans, and a set of simpler earning tools that are easier to understand in plain financial terms.
Xapo is effectively arguing that the grown-up version of crypto earning is not the one with the biggest APY. Instead, it’s the one that makes the mechanics, custody, and trade-offs feel sustainable.
The Private Bank for Bitcoin Maximalists
We’re not looking at a mass-market crypto app trying to win users with zero-cost access and a long menu of speculative features. Xapo markets itself as a members-only private bank for Bitcoin holders, and the $1,000 annual fee is part of that identity.
On its own site, the company presents the membership as a package built around secure custody, daily Bitcoin earnings, liquidity tools, and global access, all aimed at people who see BTC as a serious component of personal wealth.
Ultimately, the industry needs a solution that will give long-term holders of Bitcoin a more complete financial structure around the asset they already believe in. If the old model was simply to buy Bitcoin and wait, Xapo is making the case for something more mature.
Disclaimer: This communication is not intended for, and must not be acted upon by persons resident in the United Kingdom.
The post How BTC Holders Can Borrow, Spend, and Earn Without Exiting Bitcoin appeared first on BeInCrypto.
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