Crypto Vesting

Former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky will probably be allowed to travel for his daughter’s wedding regardless of the outcome of his May 8 sentencing hearing.

In a May 8 filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge John Koeltl approved an application for Mashinsky to travel from New York to Memphis, Tennessee, between May 26 and May 29 for his daughter’s wedding. The approval was available on the public docket as of May 8, but appeared to have been removed at the time of publication.

Alex Mashinsky’s request to travel for his daughter’s wedding. Source: PACER

Judge Koeltl will determine in a May 8 hearing whether Mashinsky serves prison time following a plea deal with prosecutors.

The former Celsius CEO appeared ready to go to trial in 2024 until his lawyers lost a motion to have his charges dismissed. In December, He pleaded

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Opinion by Jonathan Farnell, CEO of Freedx

It’s 2025, and over 560 million people worldwide are already using cryptocurrency — roughly 17 times the population of Tokyo. That’s a vibrant community, yet for every user who’s embraced it, billions more stand on the sidelines, put off by the complicated interactions and clunky interfaces of protocols, platforms, decentralized apps (DApps), and mobile applications. Why? Blockchain technology offers game-changing potential — decentralized ownership, secure trades — but let’s face it: Most people still find it intimidating, risky, and confusing. User experience (UX) might just be the deciding factor in whether cryptocurrency achieves mass adoption or remains a niche segment.

Take complexity. A 2024 Chainalysis report pointed out that 43% of would-be crypto users shy away from the technical tangle of private keys and gas fees. Have you ever lost

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Cryptocurrency mining firm Hut 8 increased its hashrate by 79% during the first quarter of the year.

According to Hut8’s latest quarterly report released on May 8, the firm saw a net loss of $134.3 million despite revenue of $21.8 million. The firm’s CEO, Asher Genoot, explained that this was a result of large-scale investments.

“As reflected in our results, the first quarter was a deliberate and necessary phase of investment,” Genoot said. “We believe the returns on this work will become increasingly visible in the quarters ahead.”

Hut 8 operations reached a total energy capacity of 1,020 megawatts as of March 31, enough to power well over 800,000 average homes in the United States. The company also has the right to scale up its operation by another 2,600 MW.

Related: Bitcoin mining — Institutions boost

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Bitcoin (BTC) has long been branded as “digital gold,” a store of value for believers in scarcity, decentralization and self-sovereignty. As institutional interest grows, geopolitics shift, and new layers emerge on Bitcoin’s stack, is it time for the narrative to evolve? 

In this episode of The Clear Crypto Podcast, hosts Nathan Jeffay and Gareth Jenkinson speak with longtime Bitcoiner and entrepreneur Dan Held, who argues that Bitcoin’s next chapter may unlock broader functionality, from programmable use cases to more nuanced messaging that reaches far beyond crypto-native circles.

Political shifts

With US President Donald Trump openly backing Bitcoin — and reportedly owning it himself — Held said he sees a regulatory and reputational change. 

“We have the most open administration toward Bitcoin in the United States,” he said. 

“It kind of feels weird… Normally in the press, Bitcoin mining is destroying the environment. It’s being used by money launderers… And instead,

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Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US by trading volume, has agreed to acquire Deribit, one of the world’s biggest crypto derivatives trading platforms.

Coinbase Global will acquire Deribit for about $2.9 billion, the exchange announced on May 8.

The acquisition will allow Coinbase to expand into the profitable crypto derivatives market and continue scaling the platform’s global growth, Greg Tusar, Coinbase’s vice president of institutional product, said in the announcement.

“With Deribit’s strong presence and professional client base, Coinbase is making its most substantial move yet to accelerate our international growth strategy,” he said.

Source: CoinbaseDeribit founders to step away

Following the deal’s success, expected later in 2025, Deribit founders John and Marius Jansen will step away from the firm. Their exit would mark the end of the joint venture that began in 2014, Deribit said

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Key takeawaysAfter the shutdown of Coinhive in 2019, browser mining has made a comeback with new tools like CryptoTab Browser, Pi Network and YouHolder.Mining with a browser can cost more in electricity than the crypto earned, especially for users with mid-range devices.Despite being less energy-intensive than ASIC farms, browser mining still adds up in terms of cumulative power draw and puts a strain on your device’s hardware.Browser mining is evolving with the help of WebAssembly (Wasm), improving script efficiency and creating a smoother user experience. 

Browser-based crypto mining sounds like a dream: Just open a webpage, let it run, and your computer starts earning crypto in the background. No bulky ASICs, no GPU farms, no long setup tutorials — just your browser doing the heavy lifting.

The idea blew up in the late 2010s with tools like Coinhive, which let website owners mine Monero (XMR) using JavaScript. At first, it seemed like

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Smart contract platform Rootstock, the home of decentralized finance (DeFi) on Bitcoin, saw a sharp increase in network security and mining engagement in the first quarter of 2025, even as activity cooled.

Merged mining participation surged to an all-time high of 81%, up from 56.4% in Q4 2024, driven by the integration of major mining pools Foundry and SpiderPool, according to Messari’s first “State of Rootstock” report for 2025, shared with Cointelegraph.

The heightened miner interest boosted Rootstock’s hash power to over 740 exahashes per second, surpassing the total Bitcoin network hashrate recorded in October 2024. As a result, the network is now considered to be in a “mature phase” of merged mining growth.

The increased security coincided with a 60% reduction in transaction fees, improving user experience and positioning Rootstock more competitively within the Bitcoin layer-2 ecosystem.

“As BTCFi continues to grow, Rootstock is well-positioned for broader adoption through core upgrades like a

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Sweat, a move-to-earn platform that rewards users for physical activity, has launched a personalized AI agent and expanded its multichain infrastructure. The update is designed to improve user onboarding by offering interactive guidance and simplifying asset management across blockchains.

The AI agent, named Mia (short for Movement in Action), is powered by Near.AI — an open-source AI model platform with crosschain capabilities. Integrated into the Sweat wallet, Mia helps users to bridge, swap and manage their crypto rewards without needing deep crypto knowledge..

Sweat is rolling out support for Base, Ethereum, Arbitrum and BNB Chain. Within the app, users can now bridge assets and swap native tokens across networks, with the option to pay gas fees in Sweat (SWEAT) tokens.

Sweat co-founder Oleg Fomenko told Cointelegraph: “We’ve shifted to championing the Movement Economy — an expansive, multichain ecosystem where movement is not only rewarded but also unlocks access to financial tools, health experiences

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Space and Time, a blockchain project supported by Microsoft, has launched its public, permissionless mainnet to bring zero-knowledge (ZK)-proven data infrastructure to crypto applications.

Built by MakeInfinite Labs, Space and Time offers a decentralized, verifiable database for smart contracts to query historical, crosschain and offchain data, according to a news release shared with Cointelegraph.

The platform indexes data from major networks like Ethereum and makes it accessible through a decentralized network of validators. Developers can query this data using Space and Time’s Proof of SQL — a sub-second ZK coprocessor that delivers cryptographic proofs with every query.

“Prior to Space and Time, onchain applications had no way to query basic user data from a database of blockchain activity without introducing security risks and tampering,” said Scott Dykstra, co-founder at Space and Time.

He added that developers can now build onchain apps with built-in security, using cryptographic proofs to connect cloud databases to smart contracts.

Source:

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