Crypto Vesting

Bringing student loans onchain would increase the total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (DeFi) by more than four times, supercharging the industry, according to Yat Siu, chairman of Animoca Brands.

Speaking at Consensus 2025 in Toronto, Siu pointed to the $3 trillion global student loan market as an untapped opportunity for the crypto industry. He said moving even 10% of that market onchain could significantly boost DeFi’s growth.

“You basically more than quadruple TVL in all of DeFi,” he said, underscoring how the industry is still in its early stages. 

Consensus chairman Michael Lau (left) with Animoca Brands chairman Yat Siu (right) at the Consensus mainstage in Toronto, Canada. Source: CointelegraphWeb3-based education tools to drive crypto adoption

Siu said that Web3-based financial tools for the education sector could drive mass crypto adoption, especially among the young and unbanked.

“The first unbanked are the kids,” he said. “If a student receives a loan onchain and

Read More at https://cointelegraph.com/news/defi-student-loans-onchain-education-wave?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound

Key points:

New Bitcoin price targets leverage interplay with gold to deliver $200,000 and higher this year.

Bitcoin price cycles remain in focus as part of the BTC price “power curve” model.

Eating gold’s market cap could propel BTC/USD to nearly $1 million by the decade’s end.

Bitcoin (BTC) has a “decent chance” of hitting $250,000 or more in 2025 as attention turns to gold copycat moves.

In his latest analysis, popular X analytics account Apsk32 argued that the four-year BTC price cycle should provide giant new highs this year.

Bitcoin “power curve” delivers $200,000+ target

Bitcoin following gold to new all-time highs is a popular theory among bulls. Historically, BTC/USD follows XAU/USD higher with a delay of several months.

For Apsk32, the implications are considerable this time around — with gold hitting a record $3,500

Read More at https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-hitting-220k-reasonable-in-2025-gold-based-forecast?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound

Blockchain gaming user activity dipped and funding slowed in April, but the overall ecosystem is healthier and maturing, according to blockchain analytics platform DappRadar.

User activity dropped 10% over April, with blockchain gaming reaching a 2025 low of 4.8 million daily Unique Active Wallets, DappRadar analyst Sara Gherghelas said in the platform’s April Games Report.

Gaming dominance over the decentralized app industry also fell and is now tied with decentralized finance at 21%. 

Gherghelas said it’s clear user attention is shifting away from gaming, but under the surface, new infrastructure went live, major publishers doubled down, and high-quality games edged closer to launch.

Source: DappRadar

“The blockchain gaming industry isn’t dead — it’s evolving. It’s moving from noise to signal,” she said.

“Teams are building, and capital continues to flow into the space. What we might be seeing is a healthier

Read More at https://cointelegraph.com/news/blockchain-gaming-interest-dropped-april-overall-ecosystem-healthier?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound

Ethereum layer-2 scaling platform Starknet has reached a decentralization milestone laid out by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and is now the largest zero-knowledge rollup-based network by total value locked.

Starknet said in a press release shared with Cointelegraph that it has hit “Stage 1” decentralization, according to a framework Buterin laid out in 2022, which means the network operates with limited oversight or “training wheels.”

Starknet added that the framework was the “gold standard onchain tool for analyzing Ethereum scaling solutions,” and said it achieved the milestone through changes such as creating a security council and censorship-avoidance mechanisms. 

While the system still allows intervention from a security council, it has implemented a fully functional validity proof system governed by smart contracts.

Starknet is now the only layer-2 ZK-rollup network to have reached Stage 1 and has grown to be the largest ZK-rollup blockchain with a total value locked of

Read More at https://cointelegraph.com/news/starknet-stage-1-decentralization-top-zk-rollup-tvl?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound

The Pacific US territory of the Northern Mariana Islands has passed a bill allowing its small constituent island of Tinian to launch a stablecoin, overriding an earlier veto by the territory’s governor.

The 20-member Northern Mariana Islands House voted 14-2 to undo Governor Arnold Palacios’ April 11 veto of the bill, which allows the Tinian local government to issue licenses to internet casinos and includes a provision for the Tinian treasurer to issue, manage and redeem a “Tinian Stable Token.” 

The territory’s nine-member Senate had revived the bill on May 9, voting 7-1 in a two-thirds majority to override the veto, which then needed a two-thirds majority in the House to pass.

Representative Marissa Flores (top left) had urged for “thoughtful deliberation” on the internet gaming and stablecoin bill. Source: YouTube

Originally, a four-member Tinian delegation to the Marianas

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Jason Guthrie, head of product at asset manager WisdomTree, says he’s optimistic despite a noticeable lack of hype that typically comes along with a crypto bull run. 

There hasn’t been a “really frothy use case that has typically driven these market cycles previously,” such as initial coin offerings (ICOs), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), or DeFi lending, Guthrie told Cointelegraph at Consensus.

“This time, we’ve continued to see the asset class gathering value, we’ve continued to see the companies that are built on this technology, growing revenue, growing client bases, continuing to innovate without really hanging their hat on one of these frankly less than useful use cases,” he said.

WisdomTree founder Jonathan Steinberg (left), Jason Guthrie, head of product (middle) and head of digital assets Will Peck (right). Source: Jason Guthrie

The ICO boom <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-ico-boom-history-crypto" rel="null" target="null"

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Another 12 people have been charged for their involvement in a $263 million crypto crime spree that stole 4,100 Bitcoin from a Genesis creditor last August, along with a string of break-ins and money laundering. 

The 12 new names, included in a superseding indictment, add to charges originally brought against the main defendant in the case, Malone Lam, on Sept. 19, 2024, the Department of Justice noted in a May 15 statement.

Jeandiel Serrano was named a defendant in the initial indictment but was not included in the superseding one.

The DOJ said several defendants have been arrested, while two others are believed to be living in Dubai.

Many of the suspects, with aliases like “Goth Ferrrari” and “The Accountant,” come from California, mostly aged between 18 and 22. 

The group allegedly began operating in October 2023, evolving from friends while playing online

Read More at https://cointelegraph.com/news/12-more-charged-263-million-crypto-theft-ring?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence firm xAI has blamed an “unauthorized modification” to the Grok chatbot’s response, causing it to generate responses mentioning political and racial tensions in South Africa. 

On May 16, xAI provided an update on the Grok AI chatbot’s inflammatory responses, stating that on May 14, “an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot’s prompt on X.”

“This change, which directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic, violated xAI’s internal policies and core values,” it added.

The firm stated that it had conducted a thorough investigation and is implementing measures to enhance the AI chatbot’s transparency and reliability.

Grok generated responses on May 14, mentioning a “white genocide” conspiracy theory in South Africa when answering completely unrelated questions about topics like baseball, enterprise software, and construction. 

The AI bot claimed it was

Read More at https://cointelegraph.com/news/grok-white-genocide-rant-caused-by-unauthorized-prompt-changes-says-xai?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound

Coinbase stock dipped after news broke of a cyberattack that exposed customer data and an ongoing Securities and Exchange Commission investigation over misstated user numbers in 2021.

The double whammy of bad news rattled investors as company stock (COIN) slid 7% in a fall to $244 in after-hours trading on May 15, according to Google Finance.  

Coinbase stock 24 hours. Source: Google Finance 

Coinbase has since confirmed the report from The New York Times, which stated the SEC has been investigating whether Coinbase misstated its user numbers in past disclosures, an inquiry that began during the Biden administration and has continued under the Trump administration.

“This is a hold-over investigation from the prior administration about a metric we stopped reporting two and a half years ago, which was fully disclosed to the public,” confirmed Coinbase chief legal officer Paul

Read More at https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-drops-7-on-staff-breach-sec-probe-into-user-numbers?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound