Decentral Block Post

The US House Financial Services Committee has passed a Republican-backed stablecoin framework bill, which will now head to the House floor for a full vote.

The Committee passed the Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy, or STABLE Act, with a 32-17 vote on April 2.

The bill would provide rules around payment stablecoins, a type of crypto token tied to a currency such as the US dollar, and aims to ensure issuers give information about their business and how they back their tokens.

Related: Lawmaker alleges Trump wants to replace US dollar with his stablecoin

Other stablecoin-related bills are also working their way through Congress, including the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, which lays out oversight and reserve rules for issuers.

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are outpacing many traditional cyber threats and are no longer just a tool but a “dominant geopolitical weapon,” according to network security firm Netscout.

Global DDoS activity increased by 12.7% in the second half of 2024 compared to the first half, totaling almost 9 million attacks, according to the firm. 

A DDoS attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal web traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of internet traffic.

The largest increases have been in Latin America and the Asia Pacific regions, with around 30% and 20% increases from the first half, respectively.  

Netscout reported that there were a total of 7.9 million DDoS attacks in the first half of 2024, with a combined total of 16.8 million for the full year, up almost 30% from the 13 million attacks the firm recorded in 2023.  

Elon Musk’s computer-chip brain implant company Neuralink is seeking patients all around the world to trial its device that allows one’s thoughts to control a computer.

Neuralink is looking for people with quadriplegia — those who are not able to use their arms or legs — to sign up for a clinical trial, it said in an April 2 post on X, the social media platform also owned by Musk.

As of January, Neuralink has said that three patients have been implanted with a device. All are quadriplegic and are testing a small brain implant that tracks neural activity to control a computer or smartphone as part of a clinical trial called the Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface, or PRIME study.

Neuralink is one of several companies and academic institutions developing and testing so-called brain-computer interfaces, which vary from small wire-like implants as part of clinical trials to non-invasive devices akin to a hat.

Source: Neuralink

Crypto markets dipped after US President Donald Trump's declaration of a national emergency and sweeping tariffs on all countries as part of his latest salvo in the ongoing trade war. 

The Trump administration has hit all countries with a 10% tariff starting April 5, with some countries facing even larger rates, such as China facing a 34% tariff, the European Union 20%, and Japan 24%. 

During an April 2 speech in the Rose Garden at the White House, Trump said the US is charging countries “approximately half of what they are and have been charging us.”

🚨 @POTUS signs an Executive Order instituting reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world.

It's LIBERATION DAY in America! pic.twitter.com/p7UnfE617B

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 2, 2025

The crypto market briefly went up at the news of a 10% sweeping tariff,  but once the full scope became known, it dipped with bleeding across the board. 

Cryptocurrency exchange OKX reportedly hired former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to advise it over the federal probe that resulted in the firm pleading guilty to several violations and agreeing to pay $505 million in fines and penalties.

Cuomo, a New York-registered attorney, advised OKX on legal issues stemming from the probe sometime after August 2021 when he resigned as New York overnor, Bloomberg reported on April 2, citing people familiar with the matter.

“He spoke with company executives regularly and counseled them on how to respond to the criminal investigation,” Bloomberg said.

The Seychelles-based firm pled guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business in violation of US Anti-Money Laundering laws on Feb. 24 and agreed to pay $84 million worth of penalties while forfeiting $421 million worth of fees earned from mostly institutional clients.

The breaches occurred from 2018 to 2024 despite OKX having an official policy preventing US persons from transacting on its crypto exchange since 2017, the Department of Justice noted at the time.

Big Four accounting firm EY, formerly Ernst & Young, has changed its enterprise-focused Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Nightfall to a zero-knowledge rollup design as it says corporate clients are more comfortable with privacy solutions with easing US sanctions.

EY said in an April 2 announcement that Nightfall’s new source code, “Nightfall_4,” simplifies the network’s architecture and offers near-instant transaction finality on Ethereum while making it more accessible to users than its previous optimistic rollup-based version.

EY’s global blockchain leader, Paul Brody, told Cointelegraph that switching to a ZK-rollup model “means instant finality, but it also makes operations simpler since you don’t need a challenger node to secure the network,” which verifies the correctness of transactions.

The move away from optimistic rollups means Nightfall users won’t need to challenge potentially incorrect transactions on Ethereum and wait out the challenging period, leading to faster transaction finality.

No such feature is present with zero-knowledge rollups, meaning that a transaction becomes final as soon as it is added into a Nightfall block, EY said. 

United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing reciprocal tariffs on trading partners and a 10% baseline tariff on all imports from all countries.

The reciprocal levies on will be approximately half of what trading partners charge for US imports, Trump said. For example, China currently has a tariff of 67% on US imports, so US reciprocal tariffs on Chinese goods will be 34%. Trump also announced a standard 25% tariff on all automobile imports.

Trump told the media that tariffs would return the country to economic prosperity seen in previous centuries:

“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation. The United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been. So wealthy, in fact, that in the 1880s, they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting.”

“Then, in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying,” Trump said.

Full breakdown of reciprocal tariffs by country. Source: Cointelegraph

Two Democratic lawmakers in the US Senate and House of Representatives have called on acting Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Mark Uyeda to preserve information regarding World Liberty Financial, the crypto firm backed by President Donald Trump’s family.

In an April 2 letter, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Maxine Waters — ranking members of the Senate Banking Committee and House Financial Services Committee, respectively — asked Uyeda to provide information to Congress based on Trump’s ties to World Liberty Financial (WLFI). The two lawmakers suggested the SEC may be being influenced by the firm, and “this conflict of interest may be interfering with its mission to protect investors and maintain fair and orderly markets.”

“The Trump family’s financial stake in World Liberty Financial represents an unprecedented conflict of interest with the potential to influence the Trump Administration’s oversight — or lack thereof — of the cryptocurrency industry, creating an obvious incentive for the Trump Administration to direct federal agencies, including the SEC, to take positions favorable to cryptocurrency interests that directly benefit the President's family,” said the letter.

April 2 letter to acting SEC chair Mark Uyeda. Source: House Financial Services Committee

The letter came roughly a week after WLFI announced it had launched a stablecoin, USD1, on the BNB Chain and Ethereum blockchain. However, since January, Trump has followed through with several crypto policies and projects with potential conflicts of interest, including plans to establish a national cryptocurrency stockpile and the launch of a TRUMP memecoin.

Curve Finance, a decentralized lending protocol and exchange, notched record-breaking trading volumes of nearly $35 billion in the first quarter of 2025, a spokesperson for the protocol told Cointelegraph. 

Trading volumes increased more than 13% from the first quarter of 2024, largely due to a surge in transactions, from around 1.8 million to some 5.5 million in Q1 2025, Curve said. 

The strong Q1 volumes come amid overall declines in the cryptocurrency market, with the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies dropping by more than 20% in the year-to-date as of March 31, according to data from CoinGecko.

Curve’s total value locked (TVL) over time. Source: DefiLlama

Related: Curve Finance launches ‘Savings crvUSD’ yield-bearing stablecoin

Fidelity, a financial services company with $5.9 trillion in assets under management, has introduced new retirement accounts that will allow Americans to invest in crypto nearly fee-free.

The three accounts — a tax-deferred traditional IRA and two Roth IRAs (one is a rollover) — permit the buying and selling of Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and Litecoin (LTC). While there are no fees to open or maintain the accounts, Fidelity charges a 1% spread on the execution price of crypto buy and sell transactions.

The crypto IRAs are offered by Fidelity Digital Assets, a subsidiary of Fidelity that has traditionally offered institutional investors the opportunity to buy and sell crypto.

The broadening of its client base may be another signal of the changing crypto landscape in the United States, which has seen the adoption of a strategic Bitcoin reserve and multiple companies, including stablecoin issuer Circle, filing for an initial public offering.

Fidelity states that, for security, it holds the majority of its crypto in cold storage, which consists of crypto wallets not connected to the internet.

Ether (ETH) price has risen 6.4% from its March 30 $1,768 low but the altcoin has struggled to regain the $2,000 level. Some traders believe that the downturn is partially connected to the deflating memecoin market, which, while not exclusive to the Ethereum network, significantly reduced activity across the decentralized applications (DApps) ecosystem and broader crypto space.

Ether is currently 44% down year-to-date, and derivatives metrics indicate that traders are far from bullish and show little confidence in a strong recovery in the near term. Proof of this can be found in the premium on Ether futures relative to spot markets. 

While the figure rose to 4% on April 2, up from 2% on March 31, it is still below the neutral 5% threshold. This data indicates that Ether investors remain far from turning bullish, despite the strengthening support at the $1,800 price level.

Ether 2-month futures annualized premium. Source: Laevitas.ch

To assess whether whales and market makers lack confidence in Ether’s performance, one should analyze the ETH options market. Under neutral conditions, the 25% delta skew should be balanced between call (buy) and put (sell) options, typically ranging from -6% to 6%.

Bitcoin price caught an unexpected bid by rallying to a session high at $88,500, but will the price gains be capped at a multimonth overhead resistance that is aligned with the 50-day moving average? 

Key points:

Bitcoin extended its April. 1 gains as news that the Trump administration had not finalized its “Liberation Day” tariffs emerged. 

Israel, Mexico and India have already rolled back their tariffs on US imports or suggested that they will not do “tit for tat” tariffs in response to the expected April 2 US tariffs. 

Bitcoin (BTC) trades slightly below a 3-month descending trendline resistance where the price has consistentlybeen rejected during past rallies. 

West Virginia’s Bitcoin (BTC) strategic reserve bill would give the state more sovereignty from the federal government and freedom from a potential central bank digital currency (CBDC), State Senator Chris Rose told Cointelegraph in an exclusive interview.

“You hear these rumors that there are people at the federal government that will want to have a central bank digital currency,” Rose said. “And people don’t want that. People want decentralized currency. They want freedom.”

The bill, introduced in February, seeks to allow the state treasury to invest up to 10% of public funds in precious metals like gold and silver, stablecoins, or any digital asset that has had a $750 million market capitalization or higher over the last 12 months. Currently, the only digital asset with such a market cap is Bitcoin.

West Virginia State Senator Chris Rose. Source: Cointelegraph

Rose, the bill's sponsor, said that the reason they decided on the market cap requirement was to allow the state to have exposure to cryptocurrency, but not to get trapped “in any things like memecoins.”

The DoubleZero Protocol, a blockchain infrastructure network aiming to multiply speeds and efficiency for distributed networks, announced a validator token sale to sell token-purchase agreements for its native token to prospective validators.

Applications for the sale will be accepted April 2-10 through the CoinList platform, marking its first public token sale in the United States since 2019. The round is only available to accredited investors.

According to the protocol, only validators currently serving the high-throughput Solana, Celestia, Sui, Aptos, and Avalanche networks are eligible to apply.

Interested parties are invited to submit bids declaring a per-unit token price and maximum budgets, which will be aggregated to determine the final sale price offered to the participating validators.

A diagram of the DoubleZero validator funding round process. Source: CoinList

Bitcoin’s (BTC) price is off to a swift start in Q2, rallying by 5.53% to an intraday high of $87,333 on April 2. Currently, Bitcoin is emerging from a ten-week downtrend that began on Jan. 20 when the price peaked at $110,000.

A decisive close above the trendline might lead to continued bullish momentum for Bitcoin in the coming days.

Bitcoin 1-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Bitcoin spot traders drive the rally

Throughout March, spot traders on Binance and Coinbase held opposite stances in the market. Binance traders were aggressive BTC sellers, while Coinbase showed significant spot bids around the $80,000 price level. This dynamic contributed to the sideways price action during the majority of March.

Fast forward to April, and spot traders on major exchanges have collectively turned bullish over the past three days.

Zoop, the social app created by OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely, and the HBAR Foundation have reportedly submitted a bid to purchase the video-sharing app TikTok in the United States.

According to an April 2 Reuters report, the HBAR Foundation and Zoop filed an intent to bid on TikTok with the Trump administration. The bid will follow others from major technology companies, including Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft, and Rumble, in an attempt to keep the video-sharing app’s services alive for US users.

“Our bid for TikTok isn’t just about changing ownership, it’s about creating a new paradigm where both creators and their communities benefit directly from the value they generate,” Zoop co-founder RJ Phillips reportedly said.

Posting the TikTok logo on its X account on April 2, hinting at a bid to purchase the company. Source: HBAR Foundation

In 2024, the US Congress passed, and former President Joe Biden signed a bill into law that could potentially ban TikTok if the firm’s operations weren’t separated from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. The initial deadline for the sale of the company under the law was Jan. 19. After assuming office, President Donald Trump signed a 75-day extension for enforcement, pushing the potential TikTok sale to April 5.

California Representative Maxine Waters, ranking member of the US House Financial Services Committee, used her opening statement at a markup hearing to criticize President Donald Trump’s business and ethical entanglements with the crypto industry, including the launch of a stablecoin by a family-backed company.

Addressing lawmakers at an April 2 hearing, Waters said Trump had used his position as president to leverage “multiple crypto schemes” for profit, including a US dollar-pegged stablecoin launched by World Liberty Financial (WLFI) — the firm backed by his family.

The California lawmaker pointed to Trump’s memecoin launched in January, his plans to establish a national cryptocurrency stockpile, and “his own stablecoin,” referring to WLFI’s USD1 token launched in March.

Rep. Maxine Waters addressing the House Financial Services Committee on April 2. Source: GOP Financial Services

“With this stablecoin bill, this committee is setting an unacceptable and dangerous precedent, validating the president and his insiders’ efforts to write rules of the road that will enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else,” said Waters, adding:

The First Digital US dollar-pegged stablecoin (FDUSD) depegged on April 2 following claims of insolvency from Tron network founder Justin Sun, who said that the issuer of the tokenized fiat equivalent, First Digital, is insolvent.

First Digital responded to the claims by assuring users they are completely solvent and said that FDUSD is still fully backed and redeemable with the US dollar on a 1:1 basis.

The firm also said that the ongoing dispute is with TrueUSD (TUSD), another stablecoin. The firm wrote in an April 2 X post:

"Every dollar backing FDUSD is completely secure, safe, and accounted for with US-backed Treasury Bills. The exact ISIN numbers of all of the reserves of FDUSD are set out in our attestation report and clearly accounted for."

First Digital also indicated they would be taking legal action against Sun for making the claims on social media. "This is a typical Justin Sun smear campaign to try to attack a competitor to his business," spokespeople for First Digital wrote.

FDUSD loses dollar peg: Source: CoinMarketCap

Bitcoin (BTC) bulls have pushed the price above the $87,000 level even as US trade tariffs are slated to kick in on April 2. Bitcoin may remain volatile in the near term, but analysts remain bullish for the long term.

According to Fidelity analyst Zack Wainwright, Bitcoin is currently in an acceleration phase, which “can conclude with a sharp, dramatic rally” if history repeats itself. If that happens, Wainwright expects $110,000 to be the starting base of the next leg of the upmove.

Crypto market data daily view. Source: Coin360

BitMEX co-founder and Maelstrom chief investment officer Arthur Hayes said in a post that if the Federal Reserve pivots to quantitative easing, then Bitcoin could rally to $250,000 by year-end.

Could Bitcoin break above the $89,000 overhead resistance, starting a rally in select altcoins? Let’s analyze the charts of the top 10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

If you’ve ever wondered when is the right time to invest in Bitcoin (BTC), you won’t want to miss our latest interview with Matt Hougan. As the chief investment officer at Bitwise, Hougan provides an in-depth analysis, explaining why, from a risk-adjusted perspective, there has never been a more opportune time to buy Bitcoin.

In our discussion, Hougan lays out a compelling argument: Bitcoin’s early days were filled with uncertainty — technology risks, regulatory threats, trading inefficiencies, and reputational concerns. Fast forward to today, and those risks have significantly diminished. The launch of Bitcoin ETFs, adoption by major institutional investors, and even the US government’s strategic Bitcoin reserve have all cemented its place in the global financial ecosystem.

“Bitcoin is only 10% of gold. So just to match gold, which I think is just a stopping point on its long-term journey, it has to ten-x from here,” he said.

But that’s just the beginning. Hougan also touches on Bitcoin’s long-term price potential, why institutional adoption is about to accelerate, and how market fundamentals could push Bitcoin to new heights.

“There's just too much structural long-term demand that has to come into this market against a severely limited new supply,” he said.

Bitfarms, a global computer infrastructure company known for its Bitcoin mining operations, has entered into a $300 million loan agreement with Macquarie Group to finance the development of its high-performance computing (HPC) data centers.

According to an April 2 announcement, Macquarie’s private debt facility will provide $50 million in initial funding for Bitfarms’ Panther Creek data center project in Pennsylvania. 

The remaining $250 million will be released once Bitfarms achieves “specific development milestones at its Panther Creek location,” the announcement said.

Once developed, Panther Creek will have a nearly 500-megawatt capacity fueled by several power sources. 

Panther Creek “will be sought after by HPC tenants once construction of the project is underway,” said Joshua Stevens, an associate director at Macquarie Group. 

Sentient, an artificial intelligence development platform backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, has released an open-source AI search framework that it says outperforms leading closed-source competitors.

The company announced the public release of Open Deep Search (ODS) on April 2, describing it as a high-performance, developer-friendly alternative to platforms like Perplexity AI and OpenAI’s GPT-4o.

Sentient’s ODS aims to empower developers with open-source “Loyal AI” models, which Sentient says preserve the original intent of their developers.

The firm’s fingerprinting technology allows developers to protect intellectual property while maintaining model openness — aiming to solve the biggest issue of open-source AI, the challenges of monetizing a model without centralization.

“AI should belong to the community, not controlled by closed-source corporations,” according to Himanshu Tyagi, co-founder of Sentient and professor at the Indian Institute of Science.

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMBC), a Japanese banking and financial services conglomerate, along with business systems firm TIS Inc, Ava Labs — the developer of the Avalanche network — and digital asset infrastructure company Fireblocks, have signed an agreement to explore a framework for commercializing stablecoins in Japan.

Under a Memorandum of Understanding, the companies will focus on developing strategies around issuing and circulating stablecoins pegged to the US dollar and Japanese yen, according to a joint announcement.

Additionally, the collaboration will explore stablecoins as a settlement mechanism for tokenized real-world assets such as stocks, bonds, and real estate.

Stablecoins continue to be a major focus of crypto regulatory frameworks worldwide, and one of the sectors venture capitalists are eyeing in 2025 as nation-states push stablecoins to the forefront of their digital asset strategies.

Stablecoin total market overview. Source: RWA.XYZ

Bitcoin (BTC) reached new April highs at the April 2 Wall Street open as markets braced for US “Liberation Day.”

BTC/USD 1-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Bitcoin teases breakout in US tariff countdown

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed local highs of $86,444 on Bitstamp, the best performance for BTC/USD since March 28.

Volatility remained in the run-up to US President Donald Trump announcing a sweeping round of reciprocal trade tariffs.

The measures would be unveiled in an address from the White House Rose Garden at 4 pm Eastern Time, with Trump then holding a press conference.

Opinion by: James Strudwick, executive director, Starknet Foundation

The outlook surrounding the use of new technologies has shifted in Washington. Tesla CEO and presidential adviser Elon Musk’s proposition to incorporate blockchain technology into the US Treasury has placed blockchain and its use for state finances at the forefront of the global debate. According to Musk, much of this drive is rooted in the concern over the unsustainability of current government spending. With its immutable ledgers and transparent audit trails, blockchain is waiting in the wind, offering a potential solution to managing vast public finances. 

Musk advocates for a unified information system that can track real-time payments, credentials and government resources, spurring a debate within the fintech community about the pros and cons of introducing such a tool at the government level. The idea is compelling, as the description on the blockchain tin effectively promises accountability, traceability and streamlined operations. The shift here, namely to a blockchain-powered government infrastructure, presents several challenges that may prove to be beyond what the new administration has expected thus far.

Blockchain as state appendage 

A concern for stakeholders orbiting the blockchain world revolves around the sheer scale of government operations. Every day, the US government handles thousands of transactions across various departments. The feasibility of Musk’s vision is put into question simply as a result of its own complexity. The provable security that blockchain technology must offer while handling millions of daily transactions without buckling under the load to succeed at this scale is enormous.

A proposed solution by Musk is a hybrid model that uses “Validium” zero-knowledge rollups. The speed and efficiency of modern ZK-rollups, which can handle hundreds of millions of transactions daily, have the potential to make sure each citizen’s share of government transactions is intact and verifiable. The technology’s rapidly evolving nature, scaling to handle even higher transaction volumes in the coming years, indicates that this could be achievable.

Major cryptocurrency asset manager Grayscale Investments announced two new Bitcoin outcome-oriented exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

According to an April 2 announcement, the new products are the Grayscale Bitcoin Covered Call ETF (BTCC) and the Grayscale Bitcoin Premium Income ETF (BPI). According to an email sent to Cointelegraph, the two new Bitcoin (BTC) funds are meant to generate revenue by harnessing BTC volatility:

“Both strategies may be considered as an alternative income stream that’s less correlated to traditional income-oriented investments.“

A complex derivative product

The Bitcoin Covered Call product seeks to capture the highest premiums and maximize potential income. Grayscale suggests that it may serve as a complement to Bitcoin exposure.

Related: Bitcoin traders are overstating the impact of the US-led tariff war on BTC price

The fund's strategy involves systematically writing calls very close to spot prices. The hope is that, due to Bitcoin’s historically high volatility, it would generate income through paid call generation.

A new report by Cointelegraph Research explores Coreum’s role in institutional blockchain adoption. It analyzes the project’s technical architecture, compliance framework and its potential impact on regulated asset tokenization. The report presents insights into transaction efficiency, security mechanisms and crosschain interoperability. It also evaluates how Coreum fits into the evolving financial landscape.

Blockchain evolution and institutional requirements

The adoption of blockchain technology by financial institutions has been increasing in lockstep, with the value locked in tokenized real-world assets (RWA). The latter grew by 85% in 2024. 

Our report examines how third-generation blockchains, such as Coreum, are addressing the challenges of scalability, regulatory compliance and interoperability. Improvements in the infrastructure on the base layer will lead to more seamless institutional adoption in the future.

Read the full version of the report for free here.

Coreum is structured to support applications that require predictable transaction costs, regulatory oversight and seamless integration with financial infrastructure. Network data indicates that Coreum achieves a transaction throughput in excess of  7,000 TPS and a time to finality of about 1.2 seconds. This positions Coreum well in a crowded and highly competitive layer-1 blockchain landscape. 

The crypto industry’s sway in Washington DC has made it more likely that the industry will get beneficial legislation, but it’s also creating problems. 

Concerns of regulatory capture — a situation in which regulators or lawmakers are co-opted to serve the interests of a small constituency — have grown as crypto lobbying gains influence in Washington.

The risks of regulatory capture are twofold: First, the public interest is shut out from policy-making in favor of a single industry or company, and second, it can make regulators blind to or paralyzed by economic risks. 

Now, not even three months into Trump’s presidency, American lawmakers and industry crypto observers have voiced concerns that this regulatory capture could not only negatively affect the country but curb competition within the crypto industry as well. 

Regulatory capture in the battle for crypto policy

In a March 28 letter, prominent members of the US Senate Banking Committee and Committee on Finance addressed Acting Comptroller Rodney Hood and Michelle Bowman, Chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governor’s Committee on Supervision and Regulation.

Social messaging apps tend to make major news headlines a few times per year for either their use in planning some sort of crime or, more routinely, for users’ privacy concerns over how companies like Meta — which owns WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger — handle user data. 

In a somewhat separate event, the Trump administration became the focus of national discussion after members of US President Donald Trump’s cabinet were found to be using Signal to plan military actions in Yemen. While a hack, backdoor access or misuse of user data was not the source of criticism in this scenario, the event did raise national security concerns about Signal’s security and whether or not high-ranking government officials should be using messaging apps to discuss classified information. 

Apple’s recent decision to stop offering end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) cloud storage in the UK instead of creating a backdoor that would allow the UK government access to user data also raised eyebrows, and it highlights the ability of tech companies to make unilateral decisions about users’ data and their privacy. 

On Episode 58 of The Agenda podcast, hosts Ray Salmond and Jonathan DeYoung spoke to Sessions technical co-founder Kee Jefferys about how the decentralized, encrypted messaging app works to protect users’ privacy and data. 

Decentralize, or else the writing is on the wall

By downloading and using messaging apps, users, whether they realize it or not, often give the app and its operator permission to track their location, view their contacts and other data on their phone, and also keep records of their conversations.

DNA testing firm 23andMe is bankrupt, and now the genomic data of its 15 million users is up for sale to the highest bidder. Could that data end up on the blockchain?

The company announced on March 23 that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and that its CEO, Anne Wojcicki, had stepped down. The announcement sent waves of concern among 23andMe’s customers, many of whom are now scrambling to delete their data from the service.

Privacy advocates and government officials have weighed in, urging users to download and then delete their data. The sense of urgency increased on March 26 when a judge gave 23andMe the official stamp of approval to sell user data. Still, there is the question of where these users should move their data and whether there is a better alternative.

In the wake of the bankruptcy, blockchain advocates have seized the opportunity to make the case that DNA is better off on the blockchain, whether directly stored on the servers of a decentralized network or using some elements of Web3 technology on the back end. 

The promise of a more private 23andMe, where users control their own data, is alluring to many, yet actually bringing the world of DNA sequencing onto the blockchain is not without its challenges.