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ZRO Soars 40% After Unveiling Layer 1 Blockchain

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ZRO Chart - CoinGecko

LayerZero announced its Zero blockchain yesterday, built in collaboration with Citadel, ICE, and Google Cloud.

LayerZero’s ZRO token is leading the altcoin market today, rallying 40% after unveiling Zero, its new Layer 1 blockchain.

ZRO sold off immediately after yesterday’s announcement; however, after more details emerged – such as Ark Invest founder Cathie Wood stepping on board as an advisor – the token surged from $1.7 to $2.5.

ZRO Chart - CoinGecko
ZRO Chart – CoinGecko

The ZRO token has been pricing in an impending announcement throughout 2026, and has been one of just a handful of strong altcoins over the last six weeks. The move brings ZRO’s market capitalization to $481 million, its highest level since January 2025.

In addition to Wood, the protocol also added Michael Blaugrund, the vice president of Strategic Initiatives at Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), and Caroline Butler, the former Head of Digital Assets at the Bank of New York Mellon, and co-chair of the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), to its advisory board.

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LayerZero brands Zero as “the first multi-core world computer” and says it’s been designed to address all existing bottlenecks in blockchain design, with an explicit goal of 2 million transactions per second (TPS) for every component in its system.

“We have replaced the fragmented, one-size-fits-all model with a unified high-performance system that treats multiple applications like concurrent processes on a single modern multi-core CPU. Due to this massive cost reduction, Zero is not only an alternative to existing blockchains; it provides a credible alternative to centralized cloud providers like AWS,” the Zero debut article claims.

“By stripping away the overhead of redundant replication, we have finally made decentralization viable on a global scale. Zero is the first truly scalable, multi-core world computer,” the article concluded.

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Crypto World

Charles Hoskinson confirms deal to onboard LayerZero on Cardano

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Charles Hoskinson confirms deal to onboard LayerZero on Cardano

Input Output CEO and founder Charles Hoskinson announced a deal to get LayerZero ported over to the Cardano blockchain during a keynote speech at Consensus Hong Kong on Thursday.

LayerZero is a blockchain aimed at powering institutional-grade markets that received investment from Citadel Securities on Wednesday.

The announcement comes alongside the rollout of Midnight’s mainnet, which was also revealed on Thursday morning.

Hoskinson, who was comically wearing a McDonalds uniform in a nod to the recent market downturn said: “The industry is not healthy. S*** is getting real. Twitter is a nuclear dumpster fire. Sentiment is at an all time low.”

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But he insisted it was a micro downturn, and “the macro remains bullish.”

“And to prove it, I’m excited to announce our partnership with LayerZero,” he said. “We’re bringing USDCx to Cardano with a launch date set, complete with broad wallet and exchange support. This means stablecoins with true privacy and immutability, powered by zero-knowledge tech. It’s institutional-grade, and it’s happening now — alongside Midnight’s mainnet rollout. Get ready, folks. This changes everything.”

UPDATE (Feb. 12, 2026, 02:21 UTC): Adds additional information and commentary from Charles Hoskinson.

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Paxful To Pay $4M For Moving Funds Tied to Criminal Schemes

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Paxful To Pay $4M For Moving Funds Tied to Criminal Schemes

Peer-to-peer crypto exchange Paxful has been ordered to pay $4 million after admitting it knowingly profited from criminals who used the crypto platform due to its lack of anti-money laundering checks.

The Justice Department said on Wednesday that Paxful was sentenced to pay the fine after pleading guilty in December to conspiring to promote illegal prostitution, knowingly transmitting funds derived from crime, and violating anti-money laundering requirements.

“Paxful profited from moving money for criminals that it attracted by touting its lack of anti-money laundering controls and failure to comply with applicable money-laundering laws, all while knowing that these criminals were engaged in fraud, extortion, prostitution and commercial sex trafficking,” said Andrew Tysen Duva, the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

Prosecutors said that from January 2017 to September 2019, Paxful facilitated over 26 million trades worth nearly $3 billion in value and collected more than $29.7 million in revenue.

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Source: Criminal Division

The Justice Department said Paxful had agreed that the appropriate criminal penalty was $112.5 million, but prosecutors determined the company didn’t have the ability to pay more than $4 million.

Paxful made millions from illegal prostitution ads

The Justice Department said Paxful marketed itself as a platform that didn’t require customer information and presented fake anti-money laundering policies that it knew “were not implemented or enforced.”

According to prosecutors, one of Paxful’s customers was the classified advertising site Backpage, which authorities shut down due to hosting ads for illegal prostitution.

“Paxful’s founders boasted about the ‘Backpage Effect,’ which enabled the business to grow,” the Justice Department said, adding that Paxful’s collaboration with Backpage and a similar site between 2015 and 2022 saw the crypto platform earn $2.7 million in profits.

Related: Crypto scam mastermind gets 20 years for $73M pig butchering scheme

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Paxful shut down its operations in November and, in a now-deleted blog post in October, said the decision was due to “the lasting impact of historic misconduct by former co-founders Ray Youssef and Artur Schaback prior to 2023, combined with unsustainable operational costs from extensive compliance remediation efforts.”

Youssef said in response to Paxful’s post that the company “should have closed down when I left the company two years ago.”