News linked to this event type.
According to The Block, Korean payment service provider NHN KCP has signed a memorandum of understanding with Ava Labs to jointly build a Layer 1 network for payment use cases on Ava Cloud. The initiative will focus on three key areas: sub-second payment confirmation, on-chain transaction data encryption, and customizable merchant payment infrastructure. The two parties will also explore business opportunities including tokenized deposit models, multi-stablecoin settlement architectures, and cross-border payments. Justin Kim, Head of Asia at Ava Labs, stated that the mainnet launch timeline for this L1 will depend significantly on the progress of South Korea’s cryptocurrency regulatory framework.
According to DL News, several “revenge intermediaries” in South Korea that accept cryptocurrency as payment have recently remained highly active. These organizations receive orders via Telegram and offer services including intimidation, assault, and even murder disguised as accidents. They require clients to pay a 50% deposit in USDT and promise to send footage of the operation—recorded using body-worn cameras—via Telegram. Although the alleged ringleader was arrested on April 3, related online advertisements continued to appear as recently as April 13. This year, South Korean police have launched investigations into more than 50 such cases and arrested approximately 30 individuals; all cases were confirmed to involve cryptocurrency payments.
According to Ondo Finance’s official blog, Ondo Finance recently submitted a “no-action” request to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), seeking confirmation from the SEC that it will not take enforcement action against Ondo’s model for recording and managing certain security interests in tokenized form on the Ethereum mainnet. The request concerns its Ondo Global Markets (OGM) product, which currently offers non-U.S. investors tokenized notes providing exposure to U.S. equities and ETFs. Under this model, the underlying securities remain within the existing legal, custodial, and recordkeeping frameworks; official books and records remain unchanged. Only in limited circumstances are the relevant security interests mapped onto the Ethereum mainnet in tokenized form, held by custodian BitGo to support recordkeeping and operational processes.
According to reporter Eleanor Terrett, the American Bankers Association (ABA) has publicly criticized the recent stablecoin report issued by the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), arguing that the report’s analytical direction is flawed and overlooks more fundamental policy risks. The ABA warns that permitting stablecoins to pay interest could trigger massive outflows of deposits from community banks, raise funding costs, and thereby tighten local credit supply. The ABA stated: “The CEA report focuses on the implications of banning interest payments, thereby creating a false sense of security while sidestepping the far more disruptive scenario—rapid, large-scale expansion of interest-bearing payment stablecoins.”
According to Fortune, Foundry, a leading Bitcoin mining pool, officially launched a new mining pool for the privacy coin Zcash on April 13. Mike Colyer, CEO of Foundry, stated that this move aims to address growing institutional demand for privacy coins. The pool has already attracted several institutional miners, and its output now accounts for nearly one-third of all newly minted Zcash globally. Zcash implements transaction privacy via zero-knowledge proof technology while supporting selective disclosure to meet regulatory compliance requirements—making it more appealing to institutions than its competitor Monero. Fueled by this news, Zcash’s price has surged over 75% in the past 30 days, with its current market capitalization standing at approximately $6.3 billion. Foundry currently controls about 31% of the global Bitcoin hash rate, making it the world’s largest Bitcoin mining pool operator.
Bitget’s Q1 2026 Transparency Report, released today, shows that user trading behavior is rapidly shifting from single crypto assets to multi-asset portfolios. By the end of Q1, non-crypto assets—such as commodities—accounted for 20%–40% of total trading volume, while crypto assets’ share declined from a dominant position at the start of the year to 60%–80%. This fluctuation signals that holistic asset portfolios have become the core strategy for high-net-worth investors. At the product and ecosystem level, Bitget released the whitepaper for its Holistic Exchange (UEX) in Q1, further clarifying the integration path for crypto assets, tokenized assets, and AI-driven trading within a unified architecture. Simultaneously, the platform has continued strengthening its AI trading infrastructure, launching Agent Hub and GetClaw—advancing AI from an assistive tool to an execution system that enables agents to ingest real-time market data, identify trading signals, and execute operations autonomously within predefined parameters. Gracy Chen, CEO of Bitget, stated: “The boundary between crypto markets and traditional finance is rapidly dissolving; the explosive growth of CFDs heralds the arrival of a unified market. Users are no longer making binary asset choices—they are engaging in efficiency-based competition across diverse assets under a single logical framework.”
According to CoinDesk, researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of California, San Diego; blockchain security firm Fuzzland; and World Liberty Financial jointly published a paper warning that “LLM routers”—intermediary services positioned between users and AI models—have become a major threat to cryptocurrency asset security. The researchers discovered that 26 LLM routers are secretly injecting malicious tool calls and stealing user credentials, with one incident resulting in the complete draining of a customer’s cryptocurrency wallet worth $500,000. Additionally, by “poisoning” the router ecosystem, the researchers were able to gain control of approximately 400 downstream hosts within hours. Since sensitive data—including private keys and API credentials—is frequently transmitted in plaintext through these routers, users unknowingly expose their assets to risk. The researchers note that as McKinsey forecasts AI agents will mediate $3–5 trillion in global consumer commerce by 2030—and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao predicts AI agents’ payment volume will be one million times greater than that of humans—the current infrastructure’s security lags far behind the pace of industry development. The “weakest link” risk could thus trigger systemic, cascading crises.
According to The Block, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire responded at a press conference in Seoul, South Korea, to criticism over Circle’s decision not to freeze the stolen USDC involved in the Drift incident. He stated that Circle fulfills its legal obligations and freezes wallets only upon instruction from law enforcement agencies or courts; unilaterally freezing assets would constitute a “major ethical dilemma.” He also revealed that Circle is engaging with U.S. legislative bodies regarding the Clarity Act, seeking to establish a “safe harbor” mechanism for stablecoin issuers in extreme circumstances—but emphasized that any such authority must be explicitly granted through legislation, not exercised unilaterally by the company.
Reportedly, RealClaw is built on the OpenClaw framework and supports installing third-party skill extensions, enabling cross-platform invocation of protocols such as Kamino and Jupiter. Users can freely combine trading strategies according to their needs—such as LP farming, dollar-cost averaging (DCA), derivatives trading, and lending. Currently, RealClaw is in the Alpha testing phase and is accessible only to invited users.
It is reported that Bybit Earn has entered a strategic partnership with Doppler Finance to officially launch an institutional-grade XRP fixed-income product, offering users a new yield opportunity. Traditionally, XRP does not support native staking, limiting its yield potential. This collaboration introduces Doppler Finance’s institutional-grade yield strategies, making yield-generating capabilities—previously available only to institutions—accessible to retail users. These strategies are selected and executed by Doppler Finance, a native yield platform focused exclusively on the XRP ecosystem, dedicated to delivering secure, transparent, and compliant yield solutions for non-stakable assets. During the campaign, users participating in the 90-day XRPfi fixed-income product will earn an annualized yield of 5%, comprising a base annualized yield of 2.5% plus an additional 2.5% annualized reward drawn from a 30,000 XRP incentive pool. Campaign Period: April 13, 2026, 10:00 – July 12, 2026, 23:59 (UTC)
According to an official announcement, WINkLink, a leading decentralized oracle platform, has officially added price feeds for the stablecoin $U, with the initial launch of two core trading pairs: $U/TRX and $U/USD. This move will provide reliable and trustworthy data support for $U within the TRON DeFi ecosystem, further strengthening its usability and security, and laying a solid foundation for the implementation of more innovative financial use cases in the future.
Polkadot’s official response to the security vulnerability discovered in Hyperbridge’s Ethereum gateway contract: Hyperbridge services have been temporarily suspended to investigate the issue. This vulnerability affects only DOT tokens bridged to Ethereum via Hyperbridge and does not impact DOT tokens within the Polkadot ecosystem or DOT transferred via other cross-chain bridges. The Polkadot mainnet, parachains, and native DOT remain secure and unaffected.
According to Digital Asset, South Korea’s Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) released a report on April 13 recommending that the Ministry of Health and Welfare amend relevant laws to include overseas financial assets with economic value—and digital assets (virtual assets)—in the asset assessment for basic pension eligibility. The BAI pointed out that digital assets are currently excluded from asset evaluations, potentially allowing high-income individuals holding substantial digital assets to still qualify for basic pensions. The report recommends that digital assets be explicitly included in applicants’ income and asset declaration forms, and that information-sharing mechanisms with relevant agencies be strengthened to improve data collection. The Ministry of Health and Welfare endorsed the recommendation, emphasizing the need to enhance oversight to ensure fairness in basic pension disbursements and prevent fiscal resource leakage.
According to an official social media announcement, the Chinese decentralized contract trading platform Sun Wukong has launched RAVE/USDT with up to 20x leverage.
The Innovation, Technology and Industry Bureau of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government and the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) signed a Memorandum of Cooperation on Innovation and Technology Development to promote high-quality development of the digital economy through technological innovation. The memorandum covers key areas including artificial intelligence, cross-border data flows, and blockchain, with the aim of thoroughly implementing China’s 15th Five-Year Plan, supporting Hong Kong’s development as an international innovation and technology hub, and advancing a new real economy centered on technological innovation. HKSAR Chief Executive John Lee stated that Hong Kong will continue deepening cooperation with the CAC to further facilitate cross-border data flows within the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
Garrett Jin, agent of “1011 Insider Whale,” published an analysis stating that the U.S. government announced a full naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, effective 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time on April 13, prohibiting all vessels from entering or departing Iranian ports. This measure aims to cut off Iran’s oil revenue derived from this energy hub and reverse its current economic advantage in the ongoing conflict. Over the past six weeks, Iran has levied steep fees on vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz and restricted energy exports for certain countries, triggering significant volatility in both cryptocurrency markets and global oil prices. The U.S. action is expected to impact market risk pricing for major crypto assets, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. The analysis notes that although the U.S. holds the initiative, Iran may continue exporting oil by escalating the conflict, relying on Chinese support, and utilizing decentralized gray markets—meaning war risks and market volatility will persist.
The Kansas City Federal Reserve’s latest analysis indicates that stablecoins currently serve primarily as tools for cryptocurrency trading and liquidity provision within the financial ecosystem, rather than as mainstream payment instruments. According to the report, approximately 49% of stablecoin supply supports trading liquidity on centralized exchanges, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, and broader crypto infrastructure; 29% is used for wallet-to-wallet transfers or internal fund operations; and 21% remains idle—with less than 1% actually deployed for real-world payments. The report notes that, as natively crypto-designed instruments, stablecoins face constraints in cross-chain interoperability and integration with traditional financial systems, hindering their large-scale adoption for payments. Although payment processors such as Mastercard and Visa announced support for related technologies in 2026, stablecoin-based payment use cases remain in their infancy. Future development hinges on resolving critical challenges including interoperability, regulatory compliance, and identity verification.
According to official data, the AINFT platform has officially surpassed 700,000 users. The continuously growing user base—combined with the ongoing iteration and enhancement of its AI model capabilities—is accelerating AINFT’s emergence as one of the leading AI platforms in the Web3 space. Currently, AINFT has opened access to production-ready AI models for users and fully supports the execution of on-chain automated workflows, enabling an ultra-fast closed loop from creative conception to on-chain implementation. Leveraging its rapidly expanding community and open technical architecture, AINFT will continue lowering the barriers to Web3 AI adoption, empowering more innovative applications to deploy efficiently.
Shin Hyun Song, candidate for Governor of the Bank of Korea, stated on April 13 that central bank digital currency (CBDC) and deposit tokens—digital tokens issued by commercial banks based on CBDC—should serve as the core of the digital currency ecosystem. Shin Hyun Song noted that while he supports the introduction of won-denominated stablecoins, maintaining monetary trust remains the top priority. He believes stablecoins play a positive role in areas such as asset tokenization and programmability, and may complement or compete with deposit tokens in the future. Regarding the issuers of won stablecoins, he recommended initially permitting bank-led consortia, followed by gradual inclusion of non-bank institutions to ensure regulatory compliance. On the view that stablecoins could enhance foreign exchange transaction efficiency, he emphasized the need for careful assessment of whether blockchain technology can effectively meet relevant regulatory requirements.
According to the official announcement, Bitget’s preSPAX VIP-exclusive airdrop registration is now officially open. The first round of the airdrop is available to users who were already Bitget VIPs before April 13 at 10:00 (UTC+8). The total airdrop pool for this round is 760 preSPAX tokens. Eligible users must complete registration via the “VIP Center” on the homepage and maintain their VIP status before April 15 at 23:59 (UTC+8). Airdrop rewards will be distributed based on users’ VIP tiers and will be issued on April 16. The second round of the airdrop is open to users who newly upgrade to VIP status between April 13 at 10:00 and April 19 at 23:59 (UTC+8). The total airdrop pool for this round is 190 preSPAX tokens, with allocation determined by users’ VIP tier at the end of the campaign period. Rewards for this round will be distributed on April 20. For more details, please refer to the official Bitget platform.