Crypto Vesting

North Carolina’s House of Representatives has passed a bill allowing the state’s treasurer to invest public funds in approved cryptocurrencies, which will now head to the Senate.

The House passed the Digital Assets Investment Act, or House Bill 92, on its third reading on April 30 by a vote of 71 to 44.

Republican House Speaker Destin Hall introduced the bill in February, which would allow the treasurer to allocate 5% of the state’s investments into designated digital assets.

The investments can only be made after obtaining an independent third-party assessment confirming that the crypto holdings are maintained with a secure custody solution and risk oversight and regulatory compliance standards are met. 

New amendments allow the treasurer to examine the feasibility of allowing members of retirement and deferred compensation plans to elect to invest in digital assets held as exchange-traded products (<a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-etp-3-4-billion-inflows-weakening-dollar"

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Nearly 30 crypto advocate groups led by the lobby group the Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI) have asked the Securities and Exchange Commission for clear regulatory guidance on crypto staking and staking services.

The CCI’s Proof of Stake Alliance (POSA) group argued in an April 30 letter to the agency’s Crypto Task Force lead, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, that staking is fundamentally a technical process, not an investment activity. 

“Staking isn’t niche — it’s the backbone of the decentralized internet,” the letter said. 

The letter responded to the SEC’s call for public input on whether staking and liquid staking, where crypto users lock up their tokens to earn more, should be regulated under federal securities laws.

The coalition called for the SEC to support responsible inclusion of staking features in exchange-traded products (ETPs), and “avoid overly prescriptive rules that

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About one in four crypto tokens launched since 2021 have failed in the first quarter of this year amid a crypto market downturn and token creation becoming easier than ever, says crypto data platform CoinGecko.

Since 2021, nearly 7 million cryptocurrencies have been listed on CoinGecko’s token tracking tool GeckoTerminal, and over half, or 3.7 million tokens, “have since stopped trading and are considered failed,” CoinGecko research analyst Shaun Paul Lee said in an April 30 report.

“Alarmingly, the first quarter of 2025 alone saw the collapse of 1.8 million tokens,” he added, which is “the highest number of failures recorded in a single year.” It also comprises just under half of all failures and represents a quarter of all tokens launched since 2021.

CoinGecko recorded tokens with at least one trade before going defunct and only Pump.fun tokens that graduated, or completed the token creation platform’s bonding

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Key takeaways:

XRP ETF approval odds rise to 85% following a SEC leadership change.

Analysts predict XRP could rise to new all-time highs again in 2025.

XRP price dropped by 5% over the past 24 hours as US GDP data showed a shrinking economy.

However, a strengthening market structure and investors’ growing hope for a spot XRP ETF approval in the United States suggest that the altcoin might revisit its April peak at $2.36 in the short term. 

XRP/USD daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Technical charts currently show XRP (XRP) trading within a falling wedge pattern. A “falling wedge” is a bullish reversal chart pattern that comprises two converging trend lines that connect lower lows and lower highs. This convergence indicates weakening downward momentum. 

The pattern will resolve when the price breaks above the upper trendline at $2.40, and if this happens,

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Trading platform Robinhood has still managed to beat Wall Street estimates as its first-quarter revenues fell and its crypto trading volume cooled from a record high in Q4.

Robinhood’s Q1 results shared on April 30 show revenues fell 8.6% from the previous quarter to $927 million, topping Zacks analyst estimates by 3.16%.

The company’s crypto revenue plummeted nearly 30% quarter-on-quarter to $252 million from the firm’s record-setting Q4 2024.  

The drop could be partly attributed to the Trump administration’s tariffs, which triggered an 18% fall in the crypto market cap over the quarter.

Crypto trading volume on Robinhood also fell 35% over Q1 compared to the fourth quarter of 2024, which the firm attributed to a 10% drop in customer trades placed and a 27% fall in average notional volume per trade.

Robinhood CEO Vladimir

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Key points:

Solana held the $140 support level for a week, a first in more than two months, highlighting traders’ growing confidence.

SOL futures open interest hit $5.75 billion on April 30, showing strong institutional interest.

With rising DEX volumes and a $9.5 billion TVL, SOL could rally to $200 before a potential spot ETF approval on Oct. 10.

Solana’s native token, SOL (SOL), fell 4% between April 29 and April 30 after failing to sustain the $150 level. Despite this short-term decline, traders seem more confident as the $140 support remained intact for a whole week, an outcome that hadn’t happened in over two months. 

As demand for leveraged SOL positions reached near record highs on April 30, traders are now reconsidering the chances of a SOL rally above $200.

Solana futures aggregate open interest, SOL. Source: CoinGlass

SOL futures open interest climbed to 40.5 million SOL on April 30, marking

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Key takeaways:

Traders remain cautious about ETH’s price action, but optimistic sentiment is beginning to return.

The May 7, Ethereum Pectra upgrade could boost investor sentiment, but ETH’s price action shows investors are still hesitant to open new positions.

Ether (ETH) has been trading below $1,900 since March, leading investors to question whether the failed attempt to reclaim $4,000 in December 2024 signaled the end of an era for the leading altcoin. Concerns continue to mount as derivatives market data shows that professional traders remain cautious about ETH’s price outlook. 

ETH monthly futures should trade at a premium of 5% or more compared to spot markets to compensate for the longer settlement period, but this indicator has held below the neutral threshold.

Ether 3-month futures annualized premium. Source: Laevitas.ch

Part of the lack of enthusiasm stems from disappointment with the United States government, as Ether was

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The crypto industry has seen a significant shift toward regulatory compliance since its early days, according to James Smith, co-founder of Elliptic, a crypto compliance firm established in 2013.

“In the early days, only a few companies approached compliance in a serious way,” Smith told Cointelegraph at the Token2049 event. “Coinbase was our first customer — they knew from the start that they wanted to build their business that way. But for most others, it just wasn’t a major priority.”Elliptic co-founder James Smith at Token2049. Source: Cointelegraph

That began to shift as regulators, including those in New York State, took a more active interest in the crypto industry. The involvement of traditional financial institutions like Fidelity and DBS Bank also contributed, as they entered the space with established compliance expectations from traditional finance services.

Fidelity, for instance, offered its first crypto service for customers in 2019, while the Asian giant DBS <a data-ct-non-breakable="null"

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Binance co-founder and former CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao took the stage at Token2049 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), where he told the audience that his investment in social media platform X was aimed at protecting freedom of speech.

The former Binance executive joined a fireside panel with macroeconomic analyst Raoul Pal to discuss the rationale behind his 2022 investment in X and artificial intelligence. Zhao said:

“I think freedom of money is important, but to have freedom of money, you have to have freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is kind of the bottom line. If you don’t have that, nothing — no other freedom — works.”  

“So, when we invested in Twitter back then, it was based on that philosophy,” Zhao continued.

The former Binance CEO also criticized Europe’s crypto policies, characterizing them as dead in the water compared to more pro-business

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