Why crypto’s next breakthrough could start in the classroom — Animoca’s Yat Siu

Ripple’s $25 million donation to a crypto education fund has reignited conversations about how blockchain projects are building influence through academia—but in the latest episode of Byte-Sized Insight, Animoca Brands’ co-founder Yat Siu says that money alone isn’t enough. 

Instead, real-world use cases like student loans backed by DeFi may be crypto’s most convincing value proposition to date.

DeFi student loans

On April 30th, Pencil Finance, a project supported by Animoca Brands and its education arm Open Campus, announced a $10 million student loan financing initiative aimed at providing cheaper, blockchain-backed loans. Siu believes this type of infrastructure investment goes further than symbolic funding.

“What our industry needs a lot more is these kinds of positive-sum use cases that everyone else understands,” Siu said in the interview. “If students can receive better, cheaper and more effective opportunities and interest

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Ethereum Foundation distributed $32.6M grants to ecosystem in Q1

The Ethereum Foundation, the nonprofit that supports development across the Ethereum blockchain, distributed $32.6 million in grants in the first quarter of 2025. 

In an allocation update for Q1 2025, the organization reported spending $32 million on various initiatives through its Ecosystem Support Program (ESP). 

Categories included community and educational grants, zero-knowledge and cryptography. Other allocations included execution layers, developer experience and tools, layer-2 networks and overall ecosystem growth and support. 

Ethereum Foundation focuses on education and community

Of the 101 grants awarded, 32 went to community and education-focused initiatives. Recipients included educational content creators, conference organizers, bootcamps and hackathons such as ETHPrague and ETHiopia.

Sixteen projects focused on improving the developer experience and tooling. Beneficiaries included projects focusing on creating software-development kits (SDKs), building analytics platforms and validator tooling. 

Several projects address Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) accessibility, ecosystem tools and language support libraries. 

In addition, 14 grants were awarded to

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Gemini to launch crypto derivatives in Europe with new license

Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, has received regulatory approval to expand crypto derivatives trading across Europe.

Gemini secured a Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) license from the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA), allowing the exchange to offer crypto derivatives in the European Union, it announced on May 9.

“Once we commence business activities, we will be able to offer regulated derivatives throughout the EU and EEA [European Economic Area] under MiFID II,” said Gemini’s head of Europe, Mark Jennings.

According to the exec, the MiFID II license is a big milestone in Gemini’s European expansion, putting it one step closer to offering derivatives to both retail and institutional users.

Advanced traders will get perpetual futures

Gemini’s upcoming derivatives offering in the EU and EEA will include perpetual futures and other derivatives, which will be available to advanced

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TapSwap on Telegram: Is it legit or a scam?

What is TapSwap on Telegram?

TapSwap is a tap-to-earn Web3 application that lives inside Telegram — no separate download required.

Are your crypto friends obsessed with tapping their phones all the time? Welcome to the world of TapSwap. TapSwap is a tap-to-earn game released in mid-2024 in the Telegram Mini Apps ecosystem. The game quickly catches your attention: one minute you’re just curious… the next, you’re tapping away at 2 am trying to squeeze out one more energy boost. 

At its core, TapSwap is simple:

You tap your screen.You earn TAPS tokens.Repeat.

It’s built as a Mini App inside Telegram, which means no downloading or setting up complicated wallets just to play. Just hit “Start” and you’re in. Launched in early 2024, it quickly amassed over 72 million users, with 3 million daily active participants as of February 2025, as per the official website. 

As of late

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Senator Tim Scott slams partisan politics for failed stablecoin bill

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott blamed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act’s failure on partisan politics during a Senate speech on May 8.

Scott said the vote, which failed to reach cloture in the Senate, was expected to mark a step toward greater affordability and innovation. Instead, he said, political divisions took precedence.

“Instead, we witnessed a disappointing display of political gamesmanship that puts partisan politics above policy, and obstruction above innovation, “Scott said.

The bill had previously undergone multiple amendments to address concerns raised by Democrats, including stricter requirements for stablecoin issuers and further provisions for Anti-Money Laundering.

Related: Trump tricked into pushing XRP for crypto reserve: Report

Scott criticizes last-minute opposition

Scott, a South Carolina Republican, said that “the GENIUS Act was a bipartisan achievement at the Banking Committee.” By working

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Taiwan lawmaker calls for Bitcoin reserve at national conference

Taiwanese lawmaker Ko Ju-Chun has called on the government to consider adding Bitcoin to its national reserves, suggesting it could serve as a hedge against global economic uncertainty.

Ko, a legislator at-large in Taiwan’s legislative body, the Legislative Yuan, took to X on Friday to report that he had advocated Bitcoin (BTC) investment by the Taiwanese government at the National Conference on May 9.

In his remarks, Ko cited Bitcoin’s potential to become a hedge amid global economic risks and urged Taiwan to recognize the cryptocurrency alongside gold and foreign exchange reserves to boost its financial resilience.

Source: Ko Ju-Chun

Ko’s announcement came shortly after the legislator held talks with Samson Mow, who advocates for Bitcoin adoption by states like El Salvador at his BTC tech firm Jan3.

Taiwan is an export-oriented economy

Ko highlighted

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Bitcoin eyes sub-$100K liquidity — Watch these BTC price levels next

Key points:

Bitcoin (BTC) is at its highest levels since January, and traders are eyeing key levels to watch for what’s next.

After hitting $104,000, BTC/USD is retracing to establish support, but the fate of $100,000 is among the concerns for market participants.

Current price action represents an important battleground, as measured from the $75,000 lows this year.

” Headline driven” BTC price gains draw scrutiny

Just $6,000 from new all-time highs, per data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, BTC price action has stunned the market by jumping 10% in days.

The pace of the BTC price gains has come as a surprise for many, but longer-term perspectives show where the most difficult battleground lies.

“Since this current impulse was primarily headline driven again this puts markets into a crucial & critical trading day,” trader Skew said about the impetus for

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Germany seizes $38M in crypto from Bybit hack-linked eXch exchange

German law enforcement seized 34 million euros ($38 million) in cryptocurrency from eXch, a cryptocurrency platform allegedly used to launder funds stolen after Bybit’s record-breaking $1.4 billion hack.

The seizure, announced on May 9 by Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and Frankfurt’s main prosecutor’s office, involved multiple crypto assets, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Dash (DASH). The move marks the third-largest crypto confiscation in the BKA’s history.

The authorities also seized eXch’s German server infrastructure with over eight terabytes of data and shut down the platform, the announcement added.

eXch exchanged crypto without AML

In the statement, the BKA described eXch as a “swapping” service that allowed users to exchange various crypto assets without implementing Anti-Money Laundering (AML) measures.

The

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Is Pi Network dead? What really went wrong behind the hype

What Pi Network promised

When Pi Network first hit the scene in 2019, it had a simple but compelling pitch: What if you could mine cryptocurrency straight from your phone — no expensive gear, no massive electricity bills, just a tap a day on an app?

It caught fire. Millions of people jumped on board, lured by the idea of “free” mobile mining and a chance to get in early on the next big thing. The app made it easy: You signed up, invited a few friends, tapped a button every 24 hours, and watched your Pi (PI) balance slowly grow. With the social referral model fueling growth, it wasn’t long before over 70 million users had signed up worldwide.

Did you know? Pi Network utilizes the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), which aims for energy efficiency and decentralization, differing from Bitcoin’s energy-intensive proof-of-work.

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Solana lacks ‘convincing signs’ of besting Ethereum: Sygnum

Solana does not yet have “convincing signs” that it could overtake Ethereum as the blockchain of choice for institutions, as its revenue is seen as unstable due to its memecoin concentration, according to crypto bank group Sygnum.

In a May 8 blog post, Sygnum said that the current sentiment around Ethereum “remains poor,” with the market focused on Solana’s “transaction volumes and its recent dominance in fee generation.”

However, Sygnum said “the medium-term outlook will primarily be shaped by traditional financial institutions’ platform choices to bring their product offerings,” not by sentiment.

“We do not yet see convincing signs that Solana would be the preferred choice as Ethereum’s security, stability and longevity are highly prized,” it added.

Sygnum argued that institutions could choose Ethereum over Solana as the market has viewed the latter’s revenue generation as “less stable” due to being “highly concentrated in

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