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Three reasons why Pi network price could surge to $0.20 soon

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Pi Network price and RSI chart.

Pi Network price has dropped 10% from its weekend high, ending even lower than where it began the week. Despite this, the token could be preparing for a turnaround as three catalysts align to support a bullish recovery.

Summary

  • Pi Network price fell to $0.168 after hitting a three-week high of $0.187, but upcoming Protocol 22 upgrade and ecosystem developments could support a rebound.
  • Smart contract progress and rising developer activity, along with expectations around Consensus 2026 announcements, are driving renewed interest in the token.
  • A break above $0.187 could open a move toward $0.20, while failure to hold $0.165 support may push price toward the $0.15 level.

According to data from crypto.news, Pi Network (PI) price rallied to a three-week high of $0.187 on Saturday before profit-taking drove it back down to $0.168, losing all of its gains and testing local support levels.

Despite the recent pullback, the token could soon witness a strong rebound as three major fundamental factors begin to take effect.

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First, the upcoming Protocol 22 mandatory upgrade deadline on April 27 is forcing a massive migration of network nodes. This technical overhaul is designed to strengthen the mainnet infrastructure, and historical trends suggest that such high-stakes network updates often lead to a tightening of available supply as holders move assets into secure wallets.

Second, the successful integration of smart contracts on the testnet has reached a critical stage. With the source code now public on GitHub, developers are flocking to the ecosystem to build decentralized applications. This shift from a simple mining app to a fully functional smart contract platform is expected to drive significant utility and demand for the token.

Third, anticipation is building for the Founders’ keynote at the upcoming Consensus 2026 conference. This high-profile appearance is expected to provide the mainstream validation the project has sought for years. Major announcements regarding the open mainnet roadmap during the event could serve as a massive spark for investor confidence.

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On the daily chart, Pi Network price action shows that the next immediate resistance sits at the $0.187 mark, which coincides with the 100-day Exponential Moving Average. This level has proven to be a difficult hurdle for bulls to clear during recent attempts

Pi Network price and RSI chart.
Pi Network price and RSI chart — April 21 | Source: crypto.news

A strong break above this resistance would likely confirm a bullish trend reversal and open the doors for a rally toward the $0.20 psychological level. If momentum continues to build behind the Protocol 22 upgrade, we could even see a test of the $0.214 yearly high.

Conversely, if the token fails to hold its current support at $0.165, it could trigger a deeper correction toward the $0.15 range. This would likely occur if the broader market remains under pressure from geopolitical tensions or if there are further delays in the smart contract rollout.

Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.

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DoorDash Teams Up with Tempo on Stablecoin Payments for Its Global Marktplace

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DoorDash Teams Up with Tempo on Stablecoin Payments for Its Global Marktplace

Tempo also announced it’s launching a Stablecoin Advisory.

DoorDash is working with stablecoin-focused blockchain Tempo to build stablecoin-powered payouts to merchants and Dashers across more than 40 countries, Tempo announced in an X post today, April 21.

The delivery giant, which has been a Tempo design partner since the project was first announced in September 2025, is now moving into production, targeting faster and cheaper settlements across a three-sided marketplace that previously relied on fragmented regional rails.

Alongside the DoorDash news, Tempo, which is incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, announced that it’s launching Stablecoin Advisory, a consulting practice staffed by payments specialists, banking experts, and engineers to help other enterprises navigate the same path.

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The advisory service covers use case scoping, solution architecture, and direct engineering support, with access to Tempo’s network of custody, compliance, and on/off-ramp partners.

Tempo also shared development updates from its other design partners today in the same X post. ARQ (formerly DolarApp, backed by Sequoia and Founders Fund) is migrating its cross-border payment infrastructure to Tempo to serve over 2 million customers across Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil, with $10 billion in annualized volume.

Coastal Financial is pairing its existing institutional compliance messaging with stablecoin settlement on Tempo to cut cross-border transfers from days to minutes for its network of fintech clients.

Meanwhile, per today’s X post, Stripe — one of the two firms behind Tempo alongside Paradigm — is using the network as core blockchain infrastructure for its stablecoin money management capabilities, enabling millions of businesses to hold, send, and receive stablecoins across more than 100 countries.

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Last week, Tempo unveiled Tempo Zones, private execution environments where only transaction counterparties see the details. The feature is designed for enterprises with use cases like payroll and treasury settlement, and directly based on requirements from Tempo’s design partners.

The announcements reflect a broader shift in institutional appetite for stablecoin infrastructure.

Also last week, Singapore’s Gulf Bank recently launched a Solana USDC mint and redeem service for high-net-worth clients, underscoring that traditional financial institutions are moving beyond pilots into live products.

On the retail user side, yesterday, self-custodial wallet Tangem announced the global rollout of its Visa-powered payments tool, which lets users spend USDC via virtual Visa cards.

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This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.

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DeFi Losses Surpass $600M as Kelp DAO Exploit Pushes TVL to One-Year Low

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The Kelp DAO exploit on April 18, 2026, in which attackers minted 116,500 unbacked rsETH by poisoning a single LayerZero verifier node, has catalyzed more than $600 million in sector-wide DeFi losses over recent weeks, with cumulative damage across protocols approaching $1 billion.

The downstream effect is now visible on-chain: total value locked across DeFi has collapsed to its lowest point in twelve months, per DefiLlama data, as capital flight accelerates across restaking, lending, and cross-chain bridge protocols.

The core question this raises isn’t whether Kelp DAO failed, it did, architecturally. The question is whether a single misconfigured verifier just exposed a systemic fragility running underneath the entire cross-chain DeFi stack.

Key Takeaways:
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  • Total DeFi losses: Approximately $1 billion across recent weeks, with $600M+ directly attributable to the Kelp DAO exploit and its contagion effects.
  • Kelp DAO exploit scale: 116,500 unbacked rsETH minted – roughly 18% of circulating supply – via compromised LayerZero DVN node; no smart contract breach.
  • TVL impact: DeFi total value locked at a one-year low following a $13 billion exodus within 48 hours of the exploit.
  • Protocols affected: Aave, SparkLend, and Fluid all froze rsETH markets; Aave TVL fell from $26.4B to approximately $18B – the largest single-protocol casualty.
  • Attribution: LayerZero named North Korea’s Lazarus Group – specifically the TraderTraitor subunit – as the likely perpetrator; not yet formally confirmed.
  • Key watch item: Kelp DAO’s forthcoming forensic report and Aave’s bad debt resolution on tainted rsETH collateral are the two signals that will determine whether contagion stabilizes or deepens.

Discover: The best crypto to diversify your portfolio with

How a Single Verifier Node Took Down $600M in DeFi

The failure was architectural, not foundational, and that distinction matters for how you assess the rest of DeFi’s cross-chain infrastructure. Kelp DAO’s rsETH bridge relied on a single Decentralized Verifier Network node to authenticate LayerZero messages, a 1-of-1 configuration that security firm Halborn had flagged in prior warnings.

The attackers, identified by LayerZero as Lazarus Group’s TraderTraitor subgroup, compromised two RPC nodes feeding data to that verifier, launched DDoS attacks against backup nodes to force failover, then injected a fraudulent message that minted 116,500 rsETH against zero underlying collateral.

The stolen rsETH moved quickly. On-chain data shows the attacker swapped into ETH and Arbitrum using loans across Aave, SparkLend, and Fluid, with Tornado Cash deployed for gas fee obfuscation. Malware self-deleted from the compromised RPCs post-attack, deliberately erasing forensic logs. For more on how LayerZero’s investigation attributed the attack, the mechanics of the RPC poisoning sequence are documented in detail.

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Losses aggregated fast. The 116,500 minted rsETH seeded bad debt across lending markets that had accepted rsETH as collateral without adequate verification of its backing, an “echo chamber” for forged messages, as Halborn described it. Allium, analyzing the verification gap post-incident, noted that “the tools worked as designed. The way they were configured did not.”

That’s not a minor footnote: it means the exploit required no zero-day vulnerability, just a misconfiguration that was documented and warned about in advance.

Single-point-of-failure verifier architectures are now a documented attack surface, and Kelp DAO won’t be the last protocol running one.

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TVL at a One-Year Low: What the Capital Flight Data Actually Signals

DeFi’s aggregate TVL had already been compressing through Q1 2026 under macro pressure, but the Kelp DAO exploit accelerated the drawdown into a vertical drop.

DefiLlama data shows a $13 billion TVL exodus within the 48 hours following the April 18 attack, a pace that blindsided protocols like Compound that had no direct rsETH exposure but caught contagion withdrawals anyway.

The single-protocol casualty numbers are starker. Aave’s TVL collapsed from $26.4 billion to approximately $18 billion after the protocol froze rsETH markets, a $8.45 billion drawdown driven by users de-risking ahead of potential bad debt crystallization from tainted collateral positions.

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Aave’s risk team is now modeling two bad debt scenarios depending on recovery rates for the unbacked rsETH that was used as loan collateral before markets were frozen.

The TVL compression sets up two distinct forward scenarios. If outflows stabilize and Kelp publishes a credible forensic report with a compensation mechanism, the current level may prove to be localized contagion, ugly but bounded. If Aave’s bad debt modeling surfaces material losses and LayerZero’s multi-DVN upgrade timeline extends past Q2, expect a second leg of TVL decline as yield seekers rotate entirely out of restaking protocols into less interconnected alternatives.

Governance token valuations are already pricing the first scenario as optimistic, AAVE has shed over 20% since the exploit, and the recovery thesis depends entirely on whether Aave can close its rsETH exposure cleanly.

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39 financial giants demand an emergency fast-track for Europe’s blockchain pilot

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39 financial giants demand an emergency fast-track for Europe's blockchain pilot

European financial firms and technology groups are urging lawmakers to speed up changes to rules governing distributed ledger technology, warning the region risks falling behind the U.S. in digital finance.

In a joint letter, 39 signatories including Boerse Stuttgart Group, Nasdaq and fintech associations across several European Union (EU) countries asked the European Commission and Parliament to separate the digital ledger technology (DLT) pilot regime from a broader legislative package under review.

They argue that handling the rules on their own would allow quicker updates, Bloomberg reports. The DLT pilot, in place since 2023, lets firms test how tokenized versions of assets like shares and bonds can trade and settle using blockchains.

It sits within a wider set of 18 financial laws now moving through the EU’s legislative process, a path industry groups say could take years.

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The coalition is pushing for practical changes, including expanding the types of assets allowed, raising transaction limits to 150 billion euros ($176 billion) and removing expiry dates on licenses. These changes, they argue, would give firms room to build real markets rather than small trials.

The letter comes as the U.S. shapes laws regulating the space, including the Genius Act, meant to help bring crypto further into mainstream finance.

The European Commission has signaled it prefers to pass the full legislative package together as part of its broader plan to mobilize savings into investment.

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Google’s Quantum AI Just Spooked Ripple Into Building a 2-Year Defense Plan for XRP: Should Holders Be Worried?

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xrp logo

Ripple published an official multi-phase roadmap on April 20, 2026, outlining how the XRP Ledger will transition to post-quantum cryptography, targeting full readiness no later than 2028. The plan is a direct response to Google Quantum AI research confirming that blockchain cryptography – wallet security, transaction signing, key management – is breakable by sufficiently advanced quantum computers.

The threat isn’t alive today. But as Ripple frames it: “The threat has moved from theoretical to credible, and preparation timelines now matter.”

Key Takeaways
  • Ripple targets full post-quantum cryptography readiness for XRPL by 2028
  • Phase 2 experimentation with NIST-recommended algorithms begins H1 2026; Phase 3 Devnet hybrid deployments follow in H2 2026
  • XRPL’s native key rotation gives it a structural migration edge over Ethereum, where no protocol-level equivalent exists
  • A ‘Quantum-Day’ contingency plan is already scoped – if classical cryptography breaks unexpectedly, XRPL enforces a hard shift to post-quantum accounts using zero-knowledge proofs
  • Ripple is collaborating with Project Eleven on validator testing, Devnet benchmarking, and a post-quantum custody wallet prototype

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What Ripple’s Post-Quantum Roadmap Actually Includes

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The roadmap runs across four phases:

Phase 1 – already scoped – is a Quantum-Day contingency: if classical cryptography breaks before the transition is complete, XRPL enforces a hard cutover, rejecting classical public-key signatures and requiring funds to migrate to post-quantum secure accounts. The migration path uses PQ-based zero-knowledge proofs to prove key ownership without exposing the keys themselves.

Phase 2 (H1 2026) expands experimentation with NIST-finalized algorithms, benchmarking signature size, verification cost, throughput impact, and storage overhead under real XRPL workload conditions. Engineer Denis Angell is already prototyping ML-DSA on AlphaNet. Project Eleven is building a hybrid post-quantum signing implementation alongside validator-level testing and a custody wallet prototype for Devnet.

Phase 3 (H2 2026) moves from isolated testing to running post-quantum signature schemes in parallel with existing elliptic curve signatures on Devnet – live for application developer testing without disrupting mainnet. This phase also extends into post-quantum-friendly primitives for zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption, relevant to XRPL’s Confidential Transfers work for tokenization use cases.

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Phase 4 (targeting 2028) is the full transition: a new XRPL protocol amendment for native post-quantum cryptography, production-hardened for validator performance and deterministic settlement. Ripple describes it as “not just a cryptographic challenge” at this point – the primary risk is breaking what already works on a live global settlement network.

The applied cryptography team leading the work – Dr. Murat Cenk, Dr. Tamas Visegrady, Dr. Oleg Burundukov, and Dr. Aanchal Malhotra – is designing for cryptographic agility: multiple NIST-standardized algorithms rather than a single scheme, so the protocol can adapt as post-quantum standards evolve.

What This Means for XRP Holders and Protocol Risk

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For XRP holders tracking the long-term protocol outlook, the roadmap does two things: it validates that Ripple is treating quantum risk seriously enough to allocate dedicated cryptography talent and a multi-year engineering budget, and it draws a clear distinction between XRPL’s migration path and the far messier upgrade scenarios facing networks without native key management tools.

Xrp (XRP)
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Contingency planning is the most underappreciated element. Most blockchain quantum roadmaps assume an orderly, years-long transition. Ripple’s Phase 1 plans for the disorderly version – a sudden cryptographic break – using ZK proofs to enable safe fund recovery even in a compromised environment. That’s a materially different risk posture than “we’ll upgrade eventually.”

The honest caveat: 2028 is still two years out, post-quantum cryptography at ledger scale remains technically unsolved in production, and larger signature sizes could create real performance headaches for a network that competes on settlement speed.

Phase 2 benchmarking results – expected H1 2026 – will be the first real data point on whether the performance tradeoffs are manageable. Watch for those Devnet numbers. XRPL’s protocol evolution is moving fast on multiple fronts simultaneously, and quantum readiness is now officially one of them.

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The post Google’s Quantum AI Just Spooked Ripple Into Building a 2-Year Defense Plan for XRP: Should Holders Be Worried? appeared first on Cryptonews.

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New York Sues Coinbase and Gemini: What We Know So Far

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Vitalik Buterin Warns Users After eth.limo DNS Hijack

New York filed lawsuits against Coinbase Financial Markets and Gemini Titan for allegedly violating state law, according to court records first reported by Reuters.

Whiule copies ​of ⁠the complaints ​may ​not ⁠immediately available, speculation is that the suits target the prediction market subsidiaries of two of the largest US crypto exchanges. If so, it would mark the first enforcement action by New York against federally licensed prediction market operators.

New York Follows Through on Prediction Market Warning

New York Attorney General Letitia James warned in February that prediction markets violate the state’s gambling statutes. At the time, her office issued a consumer and industry alert stating that “the conduct, advertisement, and promotion of unlicensed sports wagering violate New York’s gambling laws.”

Coinbase launched its prediction market product for US users in January through a partnership with Kalshi. Gemini Titan, a subsidiary of Gemini Space Station, separately rolled out its own prediction market platform after obtaining a Designated Contract Market license from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

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The lawsuits come as prediction markets face a growing legal battle between state gambling regulators and the federal government. The CFTC sued Connecticut, Arizona, and Illinois on April 3 for attempting to regulate prediction market operators under state gaming laws. A federal appeals court also ruled on April 7 that New Jersey could not enforce its gambling statutes against Kalshi.

New York’s decision to sue rather than comply with federal preemption arguments signals the jurisdictional dispute may accelerate toward the Supreme Court. Several analysts have noted a circuit split is forming, a condition that typically invites high court review.

The post New York Sues Coinbase and Gemini: What We Know So Far appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Coinbase advisory board warns that quantum computing threat is on the horizon and crypto needs a plan

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Coinbase advisory board warns that quantum computing threat is on the horizon and crypto needs a plan

A new report commissioned by Coinbase sounds a cautious, but urgent, alarm: Quantum computing won’t break crypto tomorrow, but the industry can’t afford to wait.

The 50-page paper, authored by an independent advisory board that includes prominent cryptographers and academics like Dan Boneh of Stanford University, Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation and Sreeram Kannan of Eigen Labs, concludes that while today’s blockchains remain secure, a future “fault-tolerant quantum computer” capable of breaking widely used encryption is increasingly plausible, and preparation must begin now.

In recent months, concerns around quantum risk have moved further into the mainstream. Google researchers have published estimates suggesting that a sufficiently advanced quantum computer could one day break Bitcoin’s cryptography.

Major crypto ecosystems have already started mapping out their responses. The Ethereum Foundation has proposed new types of digital signatures that are designed to be safe against quantum computers, while Solana and others are experimenting with quantum-resistant wallet designs.

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The report stresses that current quantum machines are far from powerful enough to crack the cryptography underpinning Bitcoin, Ethereum and other networks. Breaking standard encryption would require vast computational overhead, a milestone still considered a major engineering challenge.

Still, the authors caution against complacency.

“We have high confidence that a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer will eventually be built,” the report states, adding that the timeline is uncertain but “clearly on the horizon.”

That uncertainty is exactly the problem, with estimates ranging from “a few years to a decade or more” and no reliable way to predict breakthroughs.

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The urgency is reflected in guidance from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which recommends migrating to quantum-resistant cryptography by 2035, a timeline the report suggests may even prove optimistic.

“Waiting for it to be urgent is not a good idea,” the Coinbase paper says, emphasizing that transitions across blockchains, wallets and exchanges could take years to execute safely.

Some assets may be more vulnerable than others. For example, Bitcoin wallets that have already revealed their public keys could be targeted, while those still protected behind hash functions may be safer in the short term.

The good news: Quantum-resistant cryptography (PQC) already exists and is being standardized by NIST.

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The bad news: It’s not an easy swap.

Post-quantum digital signatures can be tens to hundreds of times larger than current ones, which could dramatically increase blockchain data costs and reduce throughput. One estimate in the report suggests that replacing today’s signatures with quantum-proof alternatives could expand block sizes by up to 38 times.

There are also usability challenges, from migrating millions of wallets to deciding what to do with “lost” or inactive funds that never upgrade.

Rather than a single solution, the report outlines multiple transition strategies, including hybrid systems that combine existing cryptography with post-quantum updates or allow a gradual switch when needed.

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For now, the authors recommend flexible approaches that avoid sacrificing current security or performance while enabling a rapid upgrade later.

“The time to begin preparing for it is now,” the report concludes.

Read more: Solana’s quantum-threat readiness reveals harsh tradeoff: security vs speed

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Polish Parliament Stalls on Crypto Law, Local Firms Look Abroad

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Polish Parliament Stalls on Crypto Law, Local Firms Look Abroad

Poland’s parliament, the Sejm, has yet to pass a domestic enabling act for the EU’s regulations on cryptocurrencies. 

The parliament has again failed to override a presidential veto on a key crypto regulation bill. President Karol Nawrocki defended his veto, citing concerns over excessive regulation that could harm small businesses. Opponents state that the lack of framework makes the Polish market vulnerable to fraud and free-for-all for illicit actors. The political path forward is unclear.

Outside the political arena, the reality is that Poland is the only EU member state left to implement the bloc’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulatory framework. The deadline for the transitionary period ends on July 1.

This already makes it difficult for local firms to stay competitive in Europe. But after July 1, if a solution isn’t forthcoming, it will be impossible. Some are already taking their business elsewhere and moving abroad.

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Crypto industry, Polish president claim bill is burdensome

In November 2025, the Sejm passed the Crypto-Asset Market Act, which would update Polish law to comply with MiCA.

Local enterprise groups were not pleased with the result. In an October letter, the Warsaw Enterprise Institute, a business-focused think tank, outlined a few of the perceived problems with the law.

First was the length. Including draft secondary regulations, the total length was well over 300 pages. The Warsaw Enterprise Institute said that, while other EU member states were satisfied with just a few dozen pages, “the Polish law has several hundred articles and provides for additional regulations.”

It said the act introduces “a ban on marketing activities related to basic cryptocurrencies and the possibility of blocking websites by administrative decision, without the right to appeal to a court.”

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“Such solutions are not justified by MiCA and put Polish companies in a worse competitive position compared to entities operating in other EU countries.”.

Of further concern was the role the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) would play under the new regime. Under the law, the KNF would be the sole regulator of the entire crypto market. It would have the power to levy heavy fines as well as maintain and enforce a blacklist of “unreliable” crypto domains that Polish ISPs would have to block. 

Not only would the KNF be incredibly powerful, but it is already notoriously slow. According to a payment institution peer review by the European Banking Authority, the KNF’s authorization times were the slowest in Europe. In an October letter, the Warsaw Enterprise Institute claimed that the KNF has only issued two licenses for brokerage houses in the last 10 years. In the same time period, it has only issued one electronic money institution license, while Lithuania has registered over 100. 

Source: European Banking Authority

Related: EU crypto firms turn to legal support as deadline for MiCA compliance nears

On Dec. 1, 2025, Nawrocki vetoed the law, citing bloated regulation. The government failed to override the veto, and then reintroduced the exact same bill. Nawrocki vetoed the bill for a second time in February, and on April 17, the Sejm repeated itself in failing to overrule the veto.

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Polish parliament struggles to find path forward for MiCA

The battle over the crypto bill shows no signs of stopping. 

Firstly, for Nawrocki, passing the bill after being reintroduced in the same form would have presented a political problem.

Piech told Cointelegraph, “Once the president had already argued that the bill breached constitutional principles and contained excessive, disproportionate and vague provisions […] signing a near-identical version would have meant contradicting his own stated reasoning.”

“In that sense, the second push looked less like compromise and more like an attempt to pressure the president into a constitutional U-turn.”

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Some in the crypto industry hailed the veto as Nawrocki sticking to his pro-crypto, sound regulatory principles.

“The veto is not anti-regulatory, it brings common sense back into the law-making process. […] The industry did not ask for privileges. It asked for proportionality,” said Sławomir Zawadzki, co-CEO of Kanga Exchange.

Different coalitions and groups have attempted to introduce their own versions. According to Piech, Finance Minister Andrzej Domański said that the government started work yesterday on solutions for a new crypto-asset bill. 

In December, after the first veto, the Polska 2050 political party announced “an improved draft that is a step forward from the President’s arguments, which, although far-fetched, are perhaps worth considering.”

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Nawrocki himself has said he would submit a draft but the speaker in the Sejm has blocked the introduction of presidential proposals. 

The Confederation of Liberty and Independence and the Law and Justice have filed versions, while another political coalition, the Center Club, announced it would prepare another draft. 

Overall, Poland’s political class is “still deeply split on crypto.”

“This is no longer just a technical argument about implementing MiCA. It has become a broader fight over whether crypto should be brought into a normal legal framework, or treated as a politically suspicious sector that can be overregulated, stigmatised or used as a proxy battlefield after the Zonda Crypto controversy,” he said.

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Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, himself a member of the Civic Coalition, has accused local exchange Zonda Crypto of illicit funding and ties to Russian criminal networks. It has undergone a funding crisis, pausing withdrawals, and has reportedly lobbied against the bill. 

The founder of BitBay (now Zonda Crypto), Sylwester Suszek, went missing in 2022. After his disappearance, the exchange entered a funding crisis. Source: Yaguar

Related: Zonda exchange says 4.5K BTC wallet inaccessible amid withdrawal crisis

Tusk also claimed that it “sponsors political and social events in Poland and promotes very specific political forces,” including the opposition far-right Law and Justice party, of which Nawrocki is a member.

Zonda Crypto did not respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment. 

Polish crypto companies look abroad

For companies in Poland, passing a new law by the end of the MiCA transitional period on July 1 may be a case of shutting the barn doors after the horses have bolted. 

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Said Piech, “A new law may still matter institutionally, especially for banks and larger financial institutions that may want to enter crypto once there is a clear legal path. But for all existing Polish crypto firms, it is already very late.”

Some domestic crypto firms are already looking abroad. Crypto exchange Kanga is considering a move to Latvia, “a country whose representatives have openly used conferences in Poland to attract crypto firms, offering a MiCA-friendly regime, faster procedures and relatively low supervisory fees,” per Piech. 

Robert Wojciechowski, president of the Polish Chamber of Commerce for Blockchain and New Technologies, said, “Since we founded the chamber, about 70-80 percent of companies have sailed abroad. Now my colleagues say they are talking to the Czech Republic to move their business there.”

The Chancellery of the President has itself raised the alarm, stating that, “Overregulation is a guaranteed way to push companies abroad — to the Czech Republic, Lithuania or Malta — instead of creating conditions for them to operate and pay taxes in Poland.”

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Zonda Crypto CEO Przemysław Kral has previously told Cointelegraph, “Although we are a company with Polish roots and the largest player in the crypto industry on the Polish market, we have been operating outside Poland for years.”

“We are confident that we will remain a key player on the market. However, many small Polish crypto companies will lose the opportunity to operate on the market,” he said.

Now it’s a race against the clock, as July 1 draws closer. Piech doesn’t see a “realistic chance” for a bill to pass, and if it doesn’t, “domestic firms without a functioning Polish route are left at a structural disadvantage.”

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

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