US prosecutors said they have secured eight sentences in the last five months against people acting as US-based proxies for North Korea-based IT workers, shedding new light on how they have been able to infiltrate US companies. 

Two men have been sentenced this month alone. The Justice Department said Wednesday that separate courts sentenced Nashville resident Matthew Issac Knoot and New York resident Erick Ntekereze Prince for helping North Koreans work remotely for US companies.

The US perpetrators, known as “laptop farmers,” acted as recipients for laptops that US companies would send to new employees. They installed remote desktop software on the devices, allowing North Korean IT workers to use them remotely while appearing to work from the US.

North Korea’s remote worker scheme generates revenue for the government and has targeted technical roles at crypto companies to gain access to internal systems, company assets and security infrastructure. Such access can help workers understand company infrastructure and identify systems that could later be exploited.

Source: FBI Cyber Division

Prosecutors said Knoot, who was sentenced on May 1, and Prince, sentenced on Wednesday, each received 18 months in prison. 

Prince was ordered to forfeit $89,000, the amount the North Korean workers paid him for the scheme, while Knoot was ordered to pay $15,100 in restitution to the companies and to forfeit an additional $15,100, the amount he earned from the scheme.

Together, the Justice Department said the pair generated $1.2 million in revenue for North Korea, and the scheme affected nearly 70 US companies.

Related: North Korea tied to heists worth $578M in April after Kelp DAO exploit

Last month, New Jersey residents Kejia Wang and Zhenxing Wang were given nine years in prison and seven years, eight months in prison, respectively, for hosting laptop farms for North Korea.

Prosecutors in that case said the scheme lasted multiple years, used the stolen identities of 80 people in the US and made over $5 million for the North Korean government.

According to a report by CrowdStrike in August, the number of companies that hired North Korean workers over the previous 12 months jumped 220%, with workers infiltrating more than 320 companies over that period.

The report noted that North Korean workers were heavily using artificial intelligence to automate and optimize the process of applying for and working in remote jobs.

The US charged four North Koreans in June last year, accusing them of stealing more than $900,000 in crypto after using fake identities to gain remote employment at an Atlanta-based blockchain research and development company and a Serbian crypto company.

Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs — Mid-2026

US-listed spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) snapped a five-day inflow streak totaling nearly $1.7 billion as Bitcoin dipped below $80,000.

Bitcoin funds logged $277.5 million in outflows on Thursday, marking the first daily outflows in May, according to SoSoValue data.

Daily spot Bitcoin ETF flows since Friday. Source: SoSoValue

The Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) led the outflows at $129 million, while BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) followed with $98 million in outflows, according to Farside.

The sharp reversal in Bitcoin ETF flows came amid heightened Bitcoin volatility. Bitcoin rose above $82,000 on Wednesday before falling below the key $80,000 level the next day.

Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin ETF remains resilient amid broader outflows

The Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust ETF (MSBT), the first spot Bitcoin ETF launched by a US bank, recorded modest inflows of $7.3 million on Thursday. The fund has not seen a single day of outflows since debut on April 8, 2026, according to Farside.

MSBT has so far accumulated 2,920 BTC, worth around $232.6 million, growing assets held for its customers by 557% since launch.

Daily spot Bitcoin ETF flows by issuer (in millions of US dollars) since Friday. Source: SoSoValue

The only other Bitcoin fund to record inflows on the day was the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF (BTC), a low-cost spot Bitcoin ETF offered by Grayscale alongside its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC).

Related: VanEck’s Sigel sees Bitcoin reaching $1M within five years

Canton Network ETF ends slightly lower on Nasdaq debut as token slips

The Bitcoin ETF outflows came alongside the Nasdaq debut of the 21Shares Canton Network ETF (TCAN), the first US-listed ETF designed to offer direct exposure to Canton Coin, the native utility token of the Canton Network.

TCAN began trading on Nasdaq on Thursday and closed its first session at $24.66, slightly down from an initial price of $24.76, according to Nasdaq data. Canton Coin slipped 1.7% on the day, trading at $0.145 at the time of writing, according to CoinGecko.

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index. Source: Alternative.me

The negative trend in crypto markets pushed the Crypto Fear & Greed Index into “Fear” on Friday at 38 after briefly returning to “Neutral” the previous day. The index is still significantly above April levels, when it averaged 17, as Bitcoin has risen about 11% over the past 30 days.

Magazine: Adam Back says current demand is ‘almost’ enough to send Bitcoin to $1M

Tether has frozen more than $514 million in USDT across Ethereum and Tron over the past 30 days, according to onchain data from BlockSec’s USDT Freeze Tracker, highlighting the stablecoin issuer’s growing role in crypto-related enforcement actions.

As of Friday, the tool shows 370 addresses blacklisted in that period, including 328 on Tron and 42 on Ethereum, with about $505.9 million frozen on Tron and $8.73 million on Ethereum.

The figures indicate that most recent enforcement activity is concentrated on Tron and highlight how often the world’s largest stablecoin issuer is intervening onchain to immobilize funds flagged as high-risk or linked to investigations.

The recent activity also builds on a pattern of increasingly frequent enforcement. BlockSec’s analysis of 2025 data found that Tether blacklisted 4,163 unique addresses across Ethereum and Tron, freezing a total of $1.26 billion in USDT. The current pace of freezes suggests Tether could exceed that total in blacklisted USDT well before the end of the year.

Of the $1.26 billion of frozen assets in 2025, more than half (about $698 million) was later destroyed via the contracts’ “destroyBlackFunds” function, and only 3.6% of those addresses were subsequently removed from the blacklist, indicating that once imposed, freezes are rarely reversed.

Tether blacklisting activity accelerates in 2026

A separate study of 2023-2025 trends estimated that Tether immobilized roughly $3.3 billion across 7,268 addresses in those three years, far outpacing rival stablecoin issuer Circle over the same horizon.

USDT Freeze Tracker. Source: BlockSec

Tether has also disclosed larger aggregate totals and detailed some of the cases behind them. In February, the company said it had frozen about $4.2 billion in tokens in three years over links to illicit activity, with some $3.5 billion of that amount locked since 2023 as authorities increased efforts to curb crypto-related crime.

In April, Tether said it worked with the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and law enforcement agencies to freeze more than $344 million in USDT across two Tron addresses that US officials said were linked to suspected sanctions evasion involving Iran, while in February, Tether helped authorities to seize over $61 million in USDT linked to so-called pig butchering scams.

Related: Tether reports $1.04B profit in Q1 as Treasury holdings reach $141B

Stablecoin blacklists fuel wider freeze debate

The growing scale of blacklisting and related seizures has fed into a broader debate over how far crypto issuers and protocols should go in stopping suspect flows.

Some projects in decentralized finance, for example, have used upgradeable contracts and admin controls to halt or recover funds in major exploit cases, raising questions about who decides when such powers are used.

In stablecoins, where issuers such as Tether retain direct control over minting and burning mechanisms, onchain data and enforcement disclosures show that blacklisting and freezes are now used regularly in fraud, sanctions and scam investigations.

Tether and the Tron network did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s requests for comment.

Market Moves: Why is Ethereum Foundation selling? BTC futures warning signs

A trio of high-profile crypto exchanges reportedly pressed U.S. lawmakers to strike a controversial provision from a sweeping market-structure bill that, if enacted, could curb trading options for smaller digital assets. According to a Politico report, Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini asked legislators to remove language that would require platforms to offer trading only on assets “not readily susceptible to manipulation.”

The move, which emerged after the US Senate Agriculture Committee advanced its version of the bill in January, highlights the growing influence of exchange operators as policy dialogues unfold ahead of broader regulatory decisions. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong later signaled that the legislation could not be supported “as written,” particularly over issues surrounding tokenized equities. Faryar Shirzad, Coinbase’s chief policy officer, later described the matter as “old news” in a social post, underscoring how these discussions have persisted through the markup process.

The reported intervention occurs as regulators signal a push to coordinate crypto oversight even amid limited action from Congress. In March, both the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) stated their intention to coordinate enforcement and oversight of digital assets, an alignment that has sustained despite legislative gridlock. The policy jockeying comes as lawmakers grapple with a broader market-structure framework known as the CLARITY Act, which moved through the House in 2025 and would empower the CFTC to take a lead role in digital-asset regulation.

Beyond these internal debates, industry dynamics continue to shape the process. The same Politico report notes that industry voices have been active in shaping the markup, with exchanges arguing that certain provisions could chill listings of smaller tokens. The evolving dialogue has drawn attention to the tension between regulatory safeguards and the practical realities of token listings, especially for newer or less liquid assets.

In context, industry and policymaker commentary has also touched on the broader timeline for the bill. Last week, a compromise on stablecoin yield was announced between representatives of the crypto and banking sectors, reigniting hope that at least some elements of the CLARITY Act could progress in the Senate Banking Committee. Coinbase’s policy executives have repeatedly framed timing as a critical factor—some expect a markup in the banking committee as early as next week, while others anticipate at least a pathway to a floor vote before the Senate recess in August. In parallel, White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt indicated the administration’s ambition to see the bill advance, aiming for a July 4 deadline for House passage following a June Senate vote.

Taken together, the latest disclosures illustrate how closely industry executives shape the regulatory debate as lawmakers weigh a more centralized framework for digital assets. The CLARITY Act would, if enacted, grant the CFTC expanded authority over digital assets, with the SEC also seeking to coordinate on market oversight. That dual-track approach continues to influence both public policy and market behavior, even while key questions about tokenization, listing standards and potential conflicts of interest linger in the background.

Related reading: Politico detailing exchange lobbying on the markup Cointelegraph live coverage of the Senate markup Coinbase exec comments on markup timing, and Faryar Shirzad’s post outlining the ongoing discussions.

Key takeaways

• Exchanges reportedly urged lawmakers to drop the “not readily susceptible to manipulation” standard, arguing it could restrict listings for smaller assets.
• The CLARITY Act would expand the CFTC’s authority over digital assets, with ongoing coordination between the CFTC and SEC noted by regulators despite a lack of full congressional action.
• Industry voices have become visible players in the markup process, signaling potential policy leverage ahead of final passage.
• Market observers are watching timelines closely: a possible markup next week, with some anticipating House action before August recess and the White House signaling an aim for July 4 progress.
• Alongside structural questions about listings, debates around tokenized equities remain a central sticking point for supporters and critics of the bill.

Regulatory momentum, even amid uncertainty

In March, both U.S. financial regulators signaled a willingness to coordinate oversight of crypto markets, signaling a practical continuity of policy goals even without a fully enacted law. The alignment between the CFTC and SEC reinforces a pragmatic approach to overseeing a rapidly evolving asset class, where enforcement and rulemaking can proceed in parallel with legislative activity.

Industry participants, including major exchanges, have argued that certain regulatory language could impede the ability to list a broad spectrum of digital assets. The tension between safeguarding markets and enabling innovation sits at the heart of the current debate, with observers noting that the final framework will likely rely on a combination of rulemaking, oversight, and targeted legislation rather than a single sweeping statute.

What investors and builders should watch next

For market participants, the coming weeks will be telling. If the markup proceeds as anticipated, the contours of the final market-structure framework could become clearer, including how strictly platforms must assess asset manipulability and what thresholds apply to listing decisions. The ongoing dialogue around tokenized equities underscores a broader question: how to balance investor protection with the practical realities of a diverse asset universe that includes smaller, less liquid tokens.

As the timetable evolves, stakeholders should monitor both committee actions and executive-level signaling. A marked advancement in the banking committee, coupled with a cohesive federal push on stablecoins and yield, could shift the regulatory calculus in important ways for issuers, exchanges and users alike. The balance between risk controls and listing flexibility will likely shape liquidity dynamics, funding models, and the pace of mainstream adoption for digital assets.

Readers should stay tuned to committee calendars, as well as the administration’s public communications, for the next high-signal updates on where the CLARITY Act stands and how industry input may influence precisely where the final law lands.

Acting Labor Secretary Sandlin’s push for earlier Fed cuts clashes with a cautious central bank, leaving crypto trading a “higher for longer” regime even as the political drumbeat for easing grows louder.

Nagel, who heads Germany’s Bundesbank and sits on the ECB’s Governing Council, told Bloomberg on Friday that the central bank is “highly vigilant” to rising inflation risks from the Iran war and “will act as needed to prevent higher energy costs spilling over into prices more broadly.” He warned that the conflict’s medium‑term impact on inflation is “still difficult to assess” but said policymakers are determined not to let an energy price shock morph into a new wave of persistent, second‑round effects.

ECB “highly vigilant” on Iran‑driven inflation

Those remarks echo what Nagel told Reuters in March. In emailed comments reported under the headline “ECB will react if Iran war pushes up inflation,” he said: “We must be very vigilant. If it becomes apparent that the current energy price increases will translate into broad consumer price inflation in the medium term, the Governing Council of the ECB will act decisively in a timely manner.” He added that debates about inflation undershooting the ECB’s 2% target “are likely to be over for the time being.”

The ECB is currently holding its deposit rate around 2%, a level Nagel has described as “well positioned” — neither clearly stimulative nor restrictive — to respond in either direction as the data evolve. But he and other officials, including Croatia’s Boris Vujčić and chief economist Philip Lane, have repeatedly stressed that the priority now is preventing a repeat of the 2022 Russia‑Ukraine energy shock, when the ECB was slow to react and inflation surged into double digits.

Oil shock pushes eurozone inflation back to 3%

The macro backdrop supports Nagel’s caution. Eurostat data reported by the Associated Press show that euro‑area inflation rose to 3% in April from 2.6% in March, driven by a 10.9% year‑on‑year jump in energy prices as the Iran war disrupted flows through the Strait of Hormuz. Barchart’s summary of the release notes that the 21‑country eurozone is now facing “higher inflation and weaker growth,” a classic stagflation mix that makes life harder for the ECB.

CryptoBriefing, citing prediction markets, recently observed that odds of a 50‑basis‑point ECB rate cut at the April 2026 meeting sat at just 0.3% “as the Iran energy shock keeps inflation pressure on Europe,” arguing that traders “see almost no chance of aggressive rate cuts while energy-driven inflation persists.” Yahoo Finance similarly quoted policymakers saying the ECB “must be very agile and vigilant” in the face of stagflation risks, with any easing path now likely to be slower and more conditional than markets had hoped at the start of the year.

Why this matters for bitcoin and the broader crypto market

That pattern lines up with research covered by crypto.news in a story on how bitcoin and ethereum now move with global risk sentiment: when central banks are on hold and equities grind higher, BTC and ETH tend to outperform; when inflation surprises force policymakers to lean hawkish, crypto usually gets hit alongside other long‑duration assets. Another crypto.news story on U.S. jobs data showed exactly that dynamic: as rate‑cut hopes faded, the total crypto market cap slid and bitcoin lost key support levels.

Nagel’s message underscores that the eurozone leg of that macro story is not about to flip dovish simply because growth looks soft. As long as the Iran war keeps oil and gas prices elevated and euro‑area inflation hovering around 3%, the ECB’s bias will remain toward vigilance rather than easing. For crypto traders, that means the European part of the liquidity puzzle is likely to stay tight — and that bitcoin’s role in portfolios will continue to be defined more by global risk appetite and real‑yield dynamics than by any simplistic “inflation hedge” narrative.

Crypto conferences filled venues and dominated social feeds in 2025, but fresh traffic data suggests the hype barely translated into meaningful audience growth for crypto media outlets.

Crypto conference season was noisy last year. The booths were full, the panels were stacked with premier speakers, and the side events and parties ran late. Social feeds made it look like the entire digital asset market took over conference halls and parts of major cities.

So we asked the obvious question: did any of that noise actually make it into the traffic charts?

To check, our latest Outset Data Pulse analysis tracked monthly visits across 274 crypto and Web3 media outlets in Asia and the United States from January 2025 through March 2026.

How the conference effect was measured

This report was not a basic surface-level comparison of total traffic during event months. Rather, every website was measured against its own normal pattern, not the rest of the market, because it doesn’t make sense for a small regional outlet to compare against a large global publisher.

At the same time, a 10% move at one outlet may be normal, but a 10% move at another would be highly unusual. That’s why we used the z-score approach: each outlet’s traffic was converted into a z-score, which shows how meaningfully different a given month was for that specific outlet. A score near zero means the month was normal, while a higher score means the month stood out from the outlet’s own baseline.

The charts comparing conference months with non-conference months make the contradiction easier to understand. Conference season looks intense from inside the industry, but on the traffic chart, the bars barely separate.

The U.S. saw almost nothing while Asia looked better, but not cleaner

The headline number is the most important metric that should make sponsorship buyers pause. During industry conference months, U.S. crypto media outlets saw a mere 0.2% traffic gain above their usual average.

Compared with non-conference months, the gap was still just 1.5%. That is nowhere close to a surge and sits well within the kind of movement these outlets already see month to month. In a media environment where traffic can swing sharply because of Bitcoin prices, regulatory news, exchange failures, token rallies, global politics, or even crashes in other asset classes, a 0.2% move shouldn’t be part of the conversation.

Asia looked stronger at first. Conference months ran about 1% above each outlet’s yearly average, and 4.5% above quieter months with no conference.

But even that 4.5% needs scale. In the original report, the median Asian outlet had around 69,700 monthly visits, so the conference-month lift worked out to roughly 3,100 extra visits. On a smaller 10,000-visit outlet, the same kind of bump is only about 700 visits.

However, much of the Asian lift came from a cluster of 27 Southeast Asian media outlets in October 2025, coinciding with TOKEN2049 in Singapore.

It was also the month Bitcoin hit its cycle high, followed by the market witnessing its largest single-day liquidation event just a week later. That makes the picture harder to read, as a traffic spike in a conference month does not by default mean the conference caused the spike.

Crypto readers flock to media outlets when something in the market demands attention, not just because an event is on the calendar. Fast price moves, broken leverage, new records, and sudden sell-offs can all create urgency that a conference alone cannot.

When we looked outside the conference calendar, Bitcoin kept showing up

January 2025 featured no Tier-1 conferences, yet it was the strongest readership month in the entire 15-month panel for both Asia and the U.S. In that month, 47.8% of Asian outlets and 55.7% of U.S. outlets cleared the “unusually strong” bar. By contrast, April 2025, which featured Paris Blockchain Week and TOKEN2049 Dubai, pushed only 14.5% of Asian outlets and 5.6% of U.S. outlets above that same line.

Bitcoin appears to explain this narrative. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap averaged a 6.61% gain in the 30 days before Tier-1 conferences and rose before those events around 62% of the time.

Once the conference itself started, however, Bitcoin’s returns looked statistically similar to random windows of the same length. During actual conferences, BTC averaged about +0.63%, while random matching windows averaged +1.80%, which makes the event window hard to treat as special.

If Bitcoin rallies into an event, crypto media traffic may benefit from a boost. A sponsor could look at the month and assume the conference triggered a bump in total visits. But the data leaves open a simpler explanation: the price move may have created the attention, with a conference coincidentally happening in the background.

What we think sponsors should take from this

Conferences are still important because this is where founders interact with the community on a human level. Panels can provide valuable marketing opportunities and visibility, and side events can result in partnerships.

Those are real outcomes. Still, the data is less kind to the narrative that conference season reliably creates a broad media traffic gain. In the U.S., the impact was almost nonexistent, while in Asia, the lift was small and heavily shaped by one unusual month where a major conference, Bitcoin’s cycle top, and a historic liquidation event all collided.

Paying for the room, the meetings, and the stage still matters, especially for brand-building and relationship-driven outcomes. Just don’t assume the traffic will follow in the same way the narrative suggests.

Revolut users reported that the app briefly displayed Bitcoin prices plunging to around $39,900 on Friday, while some traders also received notifications suggesting extreme price moves, including that BTC had reached a 52-week low of 2 cents.

Users further reported on X apparent simultaneous price drops across multiple cryptocurrencies, including XRP and Solana (SOL), as well as stablecoins such as USDt (USDT) and USDC (USDC).

The anomalies, which quickly reversed, appear to have been confined to the Revolut app, with no matching price dislocation visible across aggregated multi-exchange data or derivatives markets during the same period.

External pricing sources such as CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko showed no corresponding movement in Bitcoin or other major assets, suggesting the incident was likely caused by a platform-specific pricing or data issue rather than a broader market event.

Revolut said BTC had dropped to 2 cents. Source: That Martini Guy B

Revolut said it was experiencing issues affecting some of the app’s functionalities and that its teams were working on a fix.

Experts point to data feed error or thin liquidity

Ranveer Arora, ex-PwC quantitative trading lead and co-founder of Altura.trade, told Cointelegraph two explanations are circulating for the roughly 50% intraday wick seen on Revolut’s BTC chart.

“The first is a data feed error,” he said. “It could be a corrupt tick pushed through Revolut’s pricing system, briefly anchoring the 1D chart at around $39,900 before correcting,” adding that, as Revolut is not an exchange and sources prices from external providers, a single bad data point could produce such a chart move.

Arora added that an alternative explanation is a transient liquidity gap in a thin order book environment. “Revolut operates with limited liquidity depth compared to a full exchange,” he said. In such a scenario, a large sell order could temporarily exhaust available bids and print a sharp downside wick before recovery.

However, he noted that the absence of matching prints across other venues makes a data error more likely, while any corresponding trades elsewhere would support the liquidity-gap hypothesis.

Related: Bitcoin can crash to $50K if ‘most critical’ bear market test fails: Analysis

Marc Tillement, director of blockchain price oracle Pyth Data Association, said the episode highlights how fragile price perception can be in fragmented data environments, where “a single bad print can distort the perception of price very quickly,” especially in retail-facing systems.

He added that as markets become increasingly continuous and data-driven, the reliability and provenance of pricing infrastructure become central to market trust, with participants depending on transparent, verifiable data layers to avoid distorted signals.

A Revolut support message said the company was “currently experiencing issues affecting some of the app’s functionalities” and that engineers were working on a fix, urging customers to monitor its status page for updates.

Revolut said it was working on the issue. Source: Revolut

A spokesperson for Revolut confirmed that the incident had been rectified, telling Cointelegraph it was caused by a “service disruption at a third-party provider,” resulting in inaccurate pricing on the platform. They said the company was now evaluating the details of the disruption.

Magazine: Bitcoin will not hit $1M by 2030, says veteran trader Peter Brandt