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Crypto Clarity Act inches toward Senate hearing as lawmakers weigh legislative trades

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Citi (C) says CLARITY Act momentum builds, but DeFi fight could stall crypto bill

The negotiation to get a crypto market structure bill through its next stages in the Senate have hovered over an almost-there status for weeks, and Republican lawmakers met on Thursday to figure out how to bridge the final gaps.

The White House was expected to get some updated legislative language on Thursday, reflecting the ongoing work on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, according to people familiar with the situation. But the talks are still going, and even if the previously uncertain senators (such as Republican Thom Tillis) become satisfied with the bill’s stablecoin yield treatment, other distinct compromises (such as the approach to decentralized finance) also need to be secured before the Senate would be able to send the crypto industry’s top policy priority to President Donald Trump for a signature.

The longstanding debate that had focused on stablecoin yield — on which bankers and crypto businesses have been divided over the structure of stablecoin rewards programs — is close to a finish, the people said, though lawmakers have been discussing what else the community bankers might be offered to get their support while resolving some of their other priorities. That could include some unrelated provisions tied to Congress’ recent housing legislation, according to reporting from Politico.

Officials from Trump’s administration were said to be involved with the meeting of Republican members of the Senate Banking Committee, which is the second panel that needs to advance the bill before it would be repackaged into a final version that can get a vote of the overall Senate. Even if the effort advances from the committee by the end of April, as Senator Cynthia Lummis predicted this week, a couple of further hurdles may be out of lawmakers’ hands.

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Democrats involved in the talks have said they still want senior government officials and lawmakers from profiting off of personal crypto interests — most pointedly aimed at Trump. And they want Democrats appointed to the party’s vacant seats at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission before the agency adopts new crypto rules. Those are both points that could require concessions from the White House, and crypto insiders are expecting those controversial points to be the last matters settled once the lawmakers are working on a final bill.

On the yield issue, Lummis has said that stablecoin rewards programs that steer clear of bank-line language on savings and interest may survive the compromise, insisting they’re more akin to credit-card rewards than interest from bank-account deposits.

Lummis said Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, whose opposition to a previous draft bill helped derail an earlier effort to get to a Senate hearing, has been more flexible in recent talks. The company didn’t immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment on its position.

As Congress works, the Securities and Exchange Commission spent much of the week issuing and discussing new crypto policy points, including a first-ever taxonomy that sets out regulatory definitions for U.S. crypto assets. In a CoinDesk op-ed on Thursday, Chairman Paul Atkins and the two Republican commissioners suggested they’re eager to have a new law back up the policy they’re working on.

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“Only Congress can rewrite the law, and we stand ready to work with [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] Chairman Michael Selig to implement the CLARITY Act,” they wrote. “In the meantime, we are providing the responsible regulatory approach that markets demand.”

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Coinbase Commerce seed phrase page alarms security community ahead of March 31 shutdown

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Epstein files show crypto ties to Coinbase, Blockstream: DOJ

Coinbase Commerce’s seed phrase withdrawal page is drawing fierce criticism from security researchers, who warn it normalizes typing 12-word recovery phrases into a website just days before the March 31 shutdown deadline.

Summary

  • A Coinbase Commerce subdomain at withdraw.commerce.coinbase.com/seed-phrase asks merchants to type 12-word seed phrases into a plain-text web form to recover funds.
  • SlowMist’s Cos, CISO 23pds and on-chain sleuth ZachXBT say the page and its cloneable front end create a powerful phishing template, especially as Commerce is wound down into Coinbase Business by March 31, 2026.
  • Critics argue the flow trains users to ignore the industry rule to never enter a seed phrase online, reviving fears after earlier Coinbase impersonation scams stole about $2 million from users.

A subdomain page belonging to Coinbase Commerce — the company’s merchant payments product — has drawn sharp criticism from leading blockchain security researchers after it was found to be prompting users to enter their 12-word seed phrases, also known as mnemonic or recovery phrases, directly into a web form in plain text. The controversy erupted on Wednesday and intensified Thursday morning, with the discovery coming at a particularly sensitive moment: Coinbase is winding down Commerce entirely by March 31, 2026, as part of a broader platform consolidation under Coinbase Business — meaning tens of thousands of merchants have a narrow window to withdraw their funds.

The page in question, hosted at withdraw.commerce.coinbase.com/seed-phrase, was referenced in a now-deleted Coinbase Commerce help document that directed users to recover funds by importing their recovery phrases into compatible wallets such as Coinbase Wallet or MetaMask. SlowMist founder Yu Xian (known online as Cos) described the practice as demonstrating an “unbelievable lack of security awareness” from a major industry player, having received multiple user reports about the page. On-chain investigator ZachXBT independently flagged the page, warning that its existence creates a direct attack surface for social engineering campaigns targeting Coinbase users.

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The concerns go beyond the page itself. SlowMist’s Chief Information Security Officer, known as 23pds, escalated the alarm by pointing out that the page’s sitemap contains structural flaws that make it trivially easy for malicious actors to replicate. Using tools such as ResourcesSaver, attackers can download the front-end code and deploy visually identical phishing sites — particularly dangerous when combined with Coinbase-lookalike domains that could credibly deceive even experienced users.

The fundamental problem is one of normalisation. Every legitimate security protocol in the cryptocurrency industry is built on a single, non-negotiable principle: a seed phrase should never be entered into any website, form, or app under any circumstances — not even an official one. Seed phrases are the master cryptographic keys to a wallet; whoever possesses them owns the funds. By building a recovery workflow that requires users to type their phrase into a browser, Coinbase has — whether intentionally or through oversight — trained users to accept a behaviour that scammers routinely exploit. Coinfomania noted that the tool even suggests copying phrases from Google Drive as an intermediate step, compounding the risk.

ZachXBT’s warning carries particular weight given his track record. In January 2026, he exposed a Coinbase support impersonation scam that resulted in approximately $2 million in stolen crypto — a scheme that relied on users being conditioned to trust Coinbase-branded interfaces. The Commerce seed phrase page represents a ready-made template for a follow-up attack of potentially far greater scale.

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As of Thursday, Coinbase had not publicly responded to the criticism, despite multiple requests for comment. The company has offered alternative withdrawal methods — including a separate commerce withdrawal tool considered safer by researchers — but has not removed or modified the seed phrase page. With twelve days remaining until Commerce is permanently disabled, the pressure on the exchange to act is mounting rapidly. For the crypto industry’s most prominent publicly listed company, the reputational stakes of a mass phishing event triggered by its own migration tooling could scarcely be higher.

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EtherFi Allocates $25M to Plume to Bring RWA Yield Onchain

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EtherFi Allocates $25M to Plume to Bring RWA Yield Onchain

EtherFi has allocated $25 million to Plume’s real-world asset (RWA) protocol Nest, marking a move to integrate tokenized RWA yield directly into its platform as it looks to expand beyond crypto-native sources of return.

According to Thursday’s announcement, rollout will begin with exposure to Plume’s nBASIS vault, which is tied to Superstate’s USCC crypto carry fund, with plans to add a dedicated real-world asset vault directly into EtherFi’s interface in a later phase.

The initial allocation gives EtherFi users indirect exposure to a strategy combining crypto basis trades, staking rewards and government securities, a structure traditionally available only to institutional or sophisticated investors.

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The integration will extend RWA exposure across EtherFi’s more than $6 billion in user deposits. According to Plume, the vault structure is designed to simplify access by handling execution and reporting onchain, while incorporating predefined risk controls and compliance features.

EtherFi is a crypto yield platform that began with Ethereum liquid staking and has since expanded into broader yield offerings, while Plume provides infrastructure that packages institutional investment strategies into onchain vaults, giving users exposure to institutional strategies managed offchain through integrated crypto platforms.

Plume has also taken steps toward integrating with traditional financial systems, including registering as a transfer agent with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in October.

Related: Babylon-Ledger tie-up expands access to Bitcoin Vaults for collateral use

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Tokenized real-world assets activity surges

Unlike traditional DeFi yield, which is generated within crypto markets, real-world assets strategies derive returns from income streams such as interest on government securities and lending activity.

According to data from RWA.xyz, the value of tokenized real-world assets has surged to more than $27 billion from about $5.7 billion at the start of 2025. Much of that growth has been driven by tokenized US Treasury products, which account for over $11 billion in onchain value.

Real-world assets onchain. Source: RWA.xyz

Tokenized Treasurys give investors onchain access to government-backed debt instruments, combining blockchain-based settlement with yield from short-term bills and money market funds. 

Products from companies including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and Circle account for a significant share of the market, with Circle’s USYC holding about $2.3 billion, BlackRock’s BUIDL fund around $2 billion and Franklin Templeton’s onchain fund over $1 billion in assets.

Tokenized Treasurys. Source: RWA.xyz

Plume reports 262,325 RWA holders holding more than $348 million in tokenized assets, with distributed asset value up 69% over the past 30 days, according to RWA.xyz data. Its Nest vault products are already live, including a basis-focused vault with more than $26 million in assets

In November, Plume co-founder and CEO Chris Yin told Cointelegraph that the tokenized real-world asset market could grow as much as fivefold this year.

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He added that while most RWA value is currently concentrated in US Treasury bills, a maturing market and shifting interest rate environment are driving users to seek higher-yield opportunities elsewhere.

Magazine: Are DeFi devs liable for the illegal activity of others on their platforms?