Coindesk

Eric Trump, son of U.S. President Donald Trump, said that World Liberty Financial’s dollar denominated stablecoin (USD1) has been officially selected as the official stablecoin to close MGX’s $2 billion investment in Binance.

Speaking at the Token2049 event in Dubai, Trump also announced that USD1 will be integrating with the Tron ecosystem, which is backed by billionaire Justin Sun.

Earlier this year, Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX put $2 billion to buy a stake in Binance, marking one of the first institutional investment in the world’s largest exchange.

The Trump-family backed World Liberty Financial, announced its plans for launching a dollar-backed stablecoin with BitGo in March.

“USD1 will become one of the most transparent and regulated stablecoin in the world. It is backed by short term treasury and cash equivalent, not only do we want to create a product in our stable point USD, one that can be sent across borders in a very seamless way, but transparency and frankly, consumer safety is paramount, right?” Trump added.

World Liberty’s co-founder, Zach Witkoff, speaking at the same event teased more future partnerships for the DeFi protocol.

“We have a lot on the way at World liberty, so stay tuned. We’re working on, you know, a lot of different DeFi integrations. Right now, we do aim to establish USD1 as the preferred stablecoin in the DeFi and CeFi ecosystem. Working really hard on, you know, getting integrations into traditional retail point of sale systems,” Witkoff said.

UPDATE (May 1, 2025, 09:50 UTC): Adds additional comment from Zach Witkoff on World Liberty.

Crypto payments startup Mesh is planning to roll out Apple Pay support for crypto transactions, allowing shoppers to pay with digital assets while settling transactions in stablecoins for merchants.

The feature, unveiled during Token2049 in Dubai, converts crypto to stablecoins at checkout using Mesh’s proprietary SmartFunding technology. The system sidesteps the need for merchants to handle crypto directly, offering what Mesh calls a “plug-and-play” payment option through Apple Pay’s interface.

This way, brick-and-mortar retailers and webshops can accept crypto payments without the need for building out the necessary infrastructure. Mesh plans to launch the feature later in the second quarter of the year.

“We believe that as soon as crypto payments are as seamless as fiat payments, nothing is left to stop the mass migration of global commerce onto blockchain rails,” said Bam Azizi, CEO and co-founder of Mesh.

Blockchain rails and stablecoins, which are crypto tokens pegged to the value of traditional currencies, have become increasingly central to payments. They offer faster, cheaper alternative to traditional channels, and are rapidly growing for remittances, payroll and commerce. Payments giant Stripe is testing a stablecoin tool following its acquisition of Bridge, while PayPal launched its own stablecoin.

Mesh raised $82 million earlier this year to expand its stablecoin-based payments settlement network globally.

The crypto market remains in prolonged consolidation with the overall market cap approaching $3 trillion as analysts eye a possible bitcoin (BTC) breakout that could push the market higher.

Bitcoin hovered near $95,00 on Thursday, while ether (ETH), BNB Chain’s BNB and Solana’s SOL remained stagnant. XRP and Cardano’s ADA dropped 2%, while dogecoin (DOGE) fell 3%.

Spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) lost $56 million on Wednesday, breaking an eight-day streak that saw nearly $3 billion flow into these U.S.-listed products.

Markets have been generally range-bound in the past week, setting the course for what could be an explosive move higher, some say.

“Such long consolidations usually accumulate strength for further movement. The next major trigger is likely to be Friday’s labour market data,” Alex Kuptsikevich, FxPro chief market analyst, told CoinDesk in an email.

“For the past five days, the market has fluctuated in a very narrow range, with some tendency towards shallower declines. Still, it has been unable to exceed its 200-day moving average, which is now passing through $3.01 trillion. A global positive is needed for a breakout, but it would open the way to the $3.5 trillion area,” Kuptsikevich added, indicating strong movements in altcoins.

Pat Zhang, head of research at WOO X, mirrored the sentiment. “BTC continues to experience volatility, forming a consolidation range between $93,000 and $95,000 since April 25, building momentum for a potential breakout,” he said in a Telegram message.

“The average funding rate for BTC has been negative over the past week, which is rare, indicating intense whale activity both on and off exchanges,” Zhang added.

Over the past two years, the financing rate for bitcoin contracts has been negative only four times, specifically during Sept. 19- Sept. 22, 2023, Oct. 20-Oct. 27, 2023, Aug. 16- Aug. 24, 2024, and Sept. 10- Sept. 17, 2024.

“Following these periods of negative financing rates, BTC experienced strong upward trends, suggesting that whale accumulation could be positioning BTC for a potential upward move,” Zhang noted.

Macroeconomic sentiment remains dented as traders globally eye the next steps made by President Donald Trump in the ongoing tariff tussles.

Per Bloomberg, Trump acknowledged Wednesday that his tariff program had a perception problem and posed a significant political risk, but he remained determined to push on. He said “potential deals” with South Korea, India, and Japan were already in place and that a deal with China was progressing in his favor.

Dogecoin (DOGE) prices were little-changed after reports of carmaker Tesla searching for a new CEO to replace technocrat Elon Musk, which the company later refuted.

DOGE prices wobbled between the 16-17 cents mark in the past 24 hours, in line with a flat market. Musk is a known dogecoin backer whose comments, or developments at his companies, tend to impact the memecoin’s prices.

Tesla board members reached out about a month ago to several executive search firms to replace Musk, sparked by his heavy involvement with the Trump administration, per WSJ. The board members met Musk and asked him to acknowledge publicly that he would spend more time at Tesla.

“This is absolutely false (and this was communicated to the media before the report was published),” Tesla’s X account said early Thursday. “The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk and the Board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead.”

Musk called the report a “deliberately false article” in a follow-up post.

Tesla has accepted DOGE — the only token it supports — for merchandise payments on its site since early 2022. Users can directly connect their DOGE wallets to the site and transfer assets to Tesla’s Dogecoin wallets for purchases.

Sam Altman’s controversial blockchain project, World, is launching in the U.S. – and said it intends to roll out 7,500 eye-scanning “orbs” in cities across the country by the end of the year.

World’s orbs — chrome, bowling ball-shaped devices that scan a person’s eyeballs to confirm their identity — will initially be available to Americans in six “key innovation hubs,” the company said: Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville and San Francisco. Those who decide to take the plunge and gaze into the orb will gain access to the World app and receive an airdrop of World’s WLD token. By the end of the year, the project aims to have enough orbs spread throughout the U.S. to give 180 million Americans, more than half the population, access to World’s network.

Altman and other executives at World’s parent company Tools for Humanity announced the U.S. expansion at a press conference in San Francisco on Wednesday evening, along with a dizzying slew of new features and partnerships for the project.

The World app will now offer its users access to crypto-backed loans through non-custodial lending protocol Morpho and prediction markets through Kalshi. Later this year, WLD holders will be able to spend their tokens like cash with a new World-linked Visa debit card. The project is even integrating its identity-verification technology into some online dating apps. Starting with Tinder users in Japan, online dating giant Match Group will pilot using World ID to verify the ages of its users.

Altman said that the idea for World predated OpenAI, his generative artificial intelligence (AI) company.

“We needed some sort of way for authenticating humans in the age of [artificial general intelligence],” Altman said during the press conference. “We needed a way that we could know what content was made by humans, [and what was made] by AI. We wanted a way to make sure that humans stayed special and central in a world where the internet was going to have lots of AI-driven content.”

Altman’s initial ideas about how to solve the problem of human verification were “very crazy,” he said – World and its eye-scanning orbs, only a little.

World is the latest crypto project to announce a U.S. expansion. Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the regulatory environment has become much friendlier to crypto projects.

The company announced it would be building a factory in Richardson, Texas – a suburb of Dallas – to help produce the orbs needed for its coming U.S. expansion. After the initial rollout, other major cities including Seattle, Orlando, San Diego and Las Vegas will receive the second wave of orbs.

“They will really be everywhere,” said Alex Blania, Tools for Humanity’s co-founder. “They will be in gas stations, convenience stores, and you will be able to verify within 10 minutes wherever you are.”

Tether, the issuer behind the nearly $150 billion USDT stablecoin, has finalized the purchase of a 70% stake in the Latin American agricultural firm Adecoagro (AGRO), which has a market cap of nearly a billion dollars.

Tether initially invested $100 million in Adecoagro in September 2024 for a 9.8% stake, then offered to increase it to 51% in February, and finally raised it to control 70% in March.

Read more: Tether’s $100M Investment in LatAm Agriculture Firm May Be a Tokenization Play

This majority stake gives Tether control over one of the region’s most prominent food and bioenergy producers. Adecoagro owns sugar mills, rice farms, dairy operations, and renewable energy assets across Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay.

Tether said it aims to help scale Adecoagro’s output while aligning the company with its mission of fostering “economic freedom” through decentralized finance and investment in underserved markets.

The move might be part of Tether’s ambition to tokenize real-world assets, as it launched its asset tokenization service Hadron last year. The platform was designed to simplify the process of converting a wide range of real-world assets, including bonds, commodities, stocks, other stablecoins, and loyalty points into digital tokens on blockchain rails.

Read more: Tether Unveils New Platform to Simplify Asset Tokenization for Businesses, Nation-States

“By aligning with in Adecoagro’s proven expertise in agriculture and renewable energy, we are taking another concrete step toward bridging traditional industries with the future of decentralized finance and economic empowerment,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether.

Following the deal, Adecoagro’s board was also reshuffled. Five members stepped down and were replaced by executives tied to Tether and its strategic goals. Juan Sartori, a Uruguayan businessman with political and agricultural interests, took over as chairman.

In the past year, Tether has launched ventures in bitcoin mining, AI, and encrypted communications. AGRO’s shares were up 2.6% on Wednesday.

Read more: Tether’s $100M Investment in LatAm Agriculture Firm May Be a Tokenization Play

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

There was a bit of volatility in crypto on Wednesday, but most of the market continued the weeks’ trend of trading in a very tight range.

Shortly after the close of the U.S. stock market, bitcoin (BTC) was changing hands at $94,700, down just 0.4% over the past 24 hours. BTC was lower by nearly 2% at one point alongside a sizable early decline in stocks.

Hit harder during the early decline, altcoins also rebounded, but underperformed bitcoin The CoinDesk 20 slumped 2% in the last 24 hours, with litecoin (LTC), ripple (XRP), avalanche (AVAX) and chainlink (LINK) all dropping roughly 4%.

Crypto equities were modestly lower, but bitcoin miner Hut 8 (HUT) was a notable underperformer, falling 5.7%.

The major U.S. stock averages tumbled 2% or more early in the session following less than stellar economic news. They retook ground throughout the day though, with the S&P 500 closing slightly in the green and the Nasdaq dipping just 0.1%.

The continuing string of lame economic data, however, has not seemed to deter U.S. President Trump from his tariff policies.

“Somebody said all the shelves are going to be open,” Trump said early Wednesday. “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally. … They have ships that are loaded up with stuff, much of which we don’t need.”

Robinhood (HOOD) topped tempered analyst estimates in the first quarter of 2025, reporting adjusted earnings per share of $0.37 against forecasts for $0.33.

The popular trading platform reported $927 million in total revenue, down from $1 billion in the fourth-quarter, but beating Street expectations of $920.1 million. Crypto-related revenue was $252 million, up 100% from year-ago levels.

Transaction-based revenue of $583 million slipped 13% from $672 million in the fourth quarter.

Robinhood had seen explosive numbers in the fourth quarter, in part thanks to a surge in crypto trading amid euphoria stemming from U.S. President Donald Trump’s presidential win. But the froth in crypto and traditional markets quickly reversed following Trump’s inauguration.

The company added $500 million to its existing $1 billion share repurchase program. To date, HOOD has bought back $667 million, leaving another$833 million under the authorization.

Robinhood’s monthly crypto volumes have historically shown high correlation with Coinbase’s (COIN) retail volumes, but Barclays analyst Benjamin Buddish believes the COIN will have seen a less meaningful decline in trading volumes in the first quarter.

Coinbase is reporting earnings on May 8 and is expected to post a slight decline in revenue to $2.1 billion from $2.27 billion in the previous quarter, while exchange volume is expected to have dropped to $403.8 from $439 billion, according to analysts at FactSet.

HOOD shares are down 2.2% in after hours action.

Cryptocurrency debit card firm Baanx has partnered with Visa to launch stablecoin payment cards tied to self-custodial wallets, starting in the U.S. with Circle’s USDC dollar pegged token, the companies said.

The Visa cards enable holders to spend USDC directly from their crypto wallets, using smart contracts to move a stablecoin balance upon card authorization from the consumer to Baanx in real time, with Baanx converting the balance into fiat for payment, according to a press release on Wednesday.

Allowing people to manage their money on-chain with the help of major card networks like Visa and Mastercard is a fast growing segment within crypto. Baanx, a firm that specializes in crypto debit cards, is also working with Mastercard on a card linked to MetaMask wallets.

The stablecoin payments is also heating up with Circle recently announcing its own payment network focused initially on cross-border payments and remittances.

Baanx’s stablecoin-linked Visa cards promise a global reach with low-cost cross border payments in the mix, according to the release.

“In many regions, access to stable currency is a luxury. We’re giving people the ability to hold and spend USD-backed stablecoins seamlessly — in a self-custodial, real-time way — anywhere Visa is accepted. This is what the future of finance looks like,” said Simon Jones, chief commercial officer at Baanx in a statement.

“We know the payments ecosystem is still in the early innings of stablecoin adoption, but real-world utility is coming to the forefront, and we’re excited for what’s next,” said Rubail Birwadker, Visa’s head of growth products and partnerships in a statement.

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Margaux Nijkerk, the Ethereum protocol reporter on CoinDesk’s Tech team.

In this issue:

• Inside Movement’s Token-Dump Scandal: Secret Contracts, Shadow Advisors and Hidden Middlemen
• Ethereum Could Supercharge Transaction Speed to 2,000 TPS Thanks to Bold New Proposal
• Bitcoin Debate on Looser Data Limits Brings to Mind the Divisive Ordinals Controversy
• Coinbase’s Base Network Achieves ‘Stage 1’ Status, Reducing Centralization Risk

Network news

MOVEMENT’S TOKEN DUMP SCANDAL: Movement, a buzzy crypto startup supported by Trump’s World Liberty Financial, was rumored to be closing a $100M series B round. Instead, following a CoinDesk investigation, the network is now at the center of an insider-dealing scandal that has exposed a seedy corner of crypto deal-making. Movement Labs is investigating whether it was misled into signing a market-making agreement that granted an obscure middleman control over 66 million MOVE tokens, triggering a $38 million selloff after the token’s debut. Internal contracts show Rentech, a firm with no digital footprint, appearing on both sides of the deal, once as a Web3Port subsidiary and once as an agent of Movement Foundation, raising questions about self-dealing. Foundation officials initially flagged the Rentech deal as “possibly the worst agreement” they had ever seen; experts warned it created incentives to pump MOVE’s price before dumping tokens onto retail investors. The incident has exposed a rift within the Movement’s top leadership: executives, legal counsel and advisors are all under scrutiny for their roles in facilitating the arrangement despite internal objections. — Sam Kessler Read more.

ETH PROPOSAL AIMS TO RAISE GAS LIMIT CEILING: Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist filed EIP-9698, a plan to let the blockchain’s gas limit grow on autopilot over the next four years. The EIP introduces a deterministic “exponential” schedule baked into client defaults, which nudges the gas limit upward by a tiny preset amount every epoch. These predictable gas limit increases allow current validators to keep their machines up to speed, cutting the need for sudden upgrades. If approved and implemented, the gas limit ceiling would climb from 36 million units to roughly 3.6 billion, allowing an estimated 6,000 simple transfers per block and over 2,000 transactions per second (TPS). Ethereum’s current TPS is around 15-20 TPS. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.

BITCOIN BLOCKCHAIN DATA DEBATES REIGNITES AS DEVELOPERS WEIGH DATA LIMITS: Bitcoin developers are again at odds over how the world’s oldest and largest blockchain should handle storing information on-chain, with a proposal to relax long-standing limits on the size of data held sparking fierce debate reminiscent of 2023’s battles over Ordinals. The blockchain’s OP_RETURN feature allows people to attach a small piece of extra data to a transaction. It is often used for things like notes, timestamps or digital records. The proposed change would remove the 80-byte cap on such data, a limit originally designed to discourage spam and preserve the blockchain’s financial integrity. Supporters argue the current limit is pointless because users are already bypassing it by using Taproot transactions, to hide data inside parts of the transaction meant for cryptographic signatures. Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr called the proposal “utter insanity” and warned that loosening data restrictions would accelerate what he sees as the degradation of Bitcoin’s financial-first purpose. — Sam Reynolds Read more.

BASE REACHES STAGE 1 ROLLUP STATUS: Base, the popular layer-2 network from cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN), is now a “stage 1” rollup, said the company, setting up its path towards full decentralization. The transition to a “stage 1” rollup comes as other layer-2s have also reached that milestone, making these networks less reliant on centralized entities. The move means that Base will now have a security council, a network of ten “independent entities, which we chose from all around the globe,” said Tom Vieira, the head of product at Base, in an interview with CoinDesk. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.

In Other News

• BlackRock is preparing to bring blockchain to the back office of one of its largest funds, filing to offer a digital share class of its $150 billion Treasury Trust money market fund through BNY Mellon. The new “DLT Shares,” short for distributed ledger technology, won’t hold crypto. BNY Mellon, the fund’s exclusive distributor, intends to use blockchain to mirror share ownership records, an incremental step that could pave the way for broader adoption of tokenized cash, digital assets, or blockchain-based settlement infrastructure in traditional finance.— Sam Reynolds Read more.
• Libre, a tokenization firm that works closely with the likes of hedge fund Brevan Howard, investment management firm Hamilton Lane and Nomura’s digital assets unit Laser Digital, plans to tokenize $500 million worth of Telegram debt as the blockchain-based Telegram Bond Fund (TBF) on the TON network that’s linked to the messaging platform. TBF will offer accredited investors exposure to some of the around $2.35 billion of outstanding bonds issued by Telegram, providing institutional-grade yield products that will also be available as collateral for on-chain borrowing and product development on TON, Libre said. — Ian Allison Read more.

Regulatory and policy

• Coinbase (COIN) filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case involving an Internal Revenue Service request for data on hundreds of thousands of its customers back in 2016, arguing the court should “protect Americans’ privacy interests in digital information stored by third-party service providers.” — Jesse Hamilton Read more.
• Arizona has broken new ground in what’s been a race among U.S. states to see which may become first to set up a crypto reserve as a formal part of their fiscal strategy, getting legislation approved with mostly Republican lawmakers in support. It’s unclear whether Governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, will look favorably on the legislation that was rejected by most Democratic lawmakers. She has vetoed a long list of bills in this session, and if she vetoes this, too, the matter is closed for the year. — Jesse Hamilton Read more.

Calendar

• April 30-May 1: Token 2049, Dubai
• May 14-16: Consensus, Toronto
• May 19-23: Solana Accelerate, New York City
• May 20-22: Avalanche Summit, London
• May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025, Las Vegas
• June 30-July 3: EthCC, Cannes
• Oct. 1-2: Token2049, Singapore