Decentral Block Post

Retired artist Ed Suman lost over $2 million in cryptocurrency earlier this year after falling victim to a scam involving someone posing as a Coinbase support representative.

Suman, 67, spent nearly two decades as a fabricator in the art world, helping build high-profile works such as Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog sculptures, according to a May 17 report by Bloomberg.

After retiring, he turned to cryptocurrency investing, eventually accumulating 17.5 Bitcoin (BTC) and 225 Ether (ETH) — a portfolio that comprised most of his retirement savings.

He stored the funds in a Trezor Model One, a hardware wallet commonly used by crypto holders to avoid the risks of exchange hacks. But in March, Suman received a text message appearing to be from Coinbase, warning him of unauthorized account access.

After responding, he got a phone call from a man identifying himself as a Coinbase security staffer named Brett Miller. The caller appeared knowledgeable, correctly stating that Suman’s funds were stored in a hardware wallet.

United Kingdom crypto companies will need to collect and report data from every customer trade and transfer beginning Jan. 1, 2026 as part of a broader effort to improve crypto tax reporting, the UK government said.

Everything from the user’s full name, home address and tax identification number will need to be collected and reported for every transaction, including the cryptocurrency used and the amount moved, the UK Revenue and Customs department said in a May 14 statement.

Details of companies, trusts and charities transacting on crypto platforms will also need to be reported.

Failure to comply or inaccurate reporting may incur penalties of up to 300 British pounds ($398.4) per user. The UK Revenue and Customs department said it would inform companies on how to comply with the incoming measures in due course.

However, UK authorities are encouraging crypto firms to start collecting data now to ensure compliance readiness.

The new rule is part of the UK’s integration of the Organisation for Economic Development’s Cryptoasset Reporting Framework to improve transparency in crypto tax reporting.

Hong Kong police arrested 12 people involved in a cross-border money laundering scheme that relied on crypto and over 500 stooge bank accounts to launder HK$118 million ($15 million), local news outlets reported.

The syndicate was dismantled on May 15, resulting in the arrest of nine men and three women in mainland China and Hong Kong.

The suspects allegedly recruited others to open bank accounts to receive proceeds from fraud cases, which were then converted into crypto at crypto exchange shops to launder the illicit funds, Hong Kong Commercial Daily reported on May 17.

The criminal organization rented a residential unit in the Hong Kong neighborhood of Mong Kok to plan and carry out its money laundering activities. Of the $15 million laundered, more than $1.2 million was linked to 58 reported fraud cases.

Caught in action

The bust followed police surveillance on May 15, when two recruits left the syndicate’s Mong Kok base — one visiting a bank, the other an ATM — before both went to convert the cash into crypto at a crypto exchange shop in the neighborhood of Tsim Sha Tsui.

Public internet infrastructure is the critical speed and performance constraint on high-throughput blockchain networks, according to Austin Federa, co-founder and CEO of DoubleZero, a project developing high-speed fiber optic communication rails for blockchains.

"The downside of the public internet is it was never built for high-performance systems. It was always built for this sort of relationship of one big server talking to one little server," Federa told Cointelegraph in an interview at Consensus 2025. The executive explained:

The executive added that the constraint posed by public internet infrastructure is now the limiting factor in blockchain performance and not compute power or software development.

Networks like DoubleZero will make blockchains faster, decrease spreads in decentralized finance (DeFi) trades, lower transaction fees, and open up new use cases for blockchain networks that were previously unavailable due to communication infrastructure constraints.

Related: Blockchains ready for institutions, lawyers hesitate: DoubleZero CEO

Moody's credit rating agency downgraded the credit rating of the United States government from Aaa to Aa1, citing the rising national debt as the primary driver behind the reduction in creditworthiness.

According to the May 16 announcement from the rating agency, US lawmakers have failed to stem annual deficits or reduce spending over the years, leading to a growing national debt. The rating agency wrote:

The credit downgrade is only one degree out of the 21-notch rating scale used by the company to assess the credit health of an entity.

Despite the negative short to medium-term credit outlook, Moody's maintained a positive outlook on the long-term health of the United States, citing its robust economy and the status of the US dollar as the global reserve currency as strengths, reflecting "balanced" lending risks.

Related: Asia’s wealthy shifting from US dollar to crypto, gold, China: UBS

Michael James, the head of institutional business development at Douro Labs — the company that developed the Pyth high-speed blockchain oracle network — told Cointelegraph that oracle networks like Pyth are disrupting the $50 billion financial data industry that provides critical price information to exchanges, brokerages, trading firms, and other institutional entities.

In an interview at Consensus 2025, the executive said that Pyth Network's data pull model sets it apart from traditional pricing oracles, allowing customers to pay for data on demand, reducing costs for institutions reliant on real-time market data.

According to the executive, the financial data industry is currently monopolized by around eight major providers that continually raise prices on clients arbitrarily. James added:

The high costs of financial data stifle innovation and prohibit small to medium-sized businesses from taking part in the global financial services industry, further concentrating the sector in the hands of a few large players and preventing novel use cases from emerging.

Related: Asset tokenization expected to speed capital flows, says Chainlink's Nazarov

South Africa’s Garden Route, famed for its lush forests, expansive beaches and charming towns, has become a testbed for Bitcoin adoption.

From Mossel Bay to Witsand and Plettenberg Bay to Knysna, Bitcoin has become popular among shop owners and travelers alike for a multitude of reasons.

“We’re seeing the early signs of a parallel, permissionless economy emerging across an entire region,” James Caw, founder of SimplB — a local crypto asset provider — told Cointelegraph, “where small businesses benefit from faster, lower-cost digital payments and where people have more options to earn, send and receive sound money securely.”

For tourists, the benefits are immediate: no currency exchange hassles, no international card fees, and the ability to pay instantly and securely. For locals, Bitcoin (BTC) offers a hedge against inflation, protection from currency volatility and new economic opportunities.

Here’s a taste of what a Bitcoin-friendly trip along the Garden Route is like.

Opinion by: Merlin Egalite, co-founder at Morpho Labs

Fintechs in the front, decentralized finance (DeFi) in the back: the DeFi Mullet.

Today’s fintech companies offer excellent user experiences but are constrained by traditional financial infrastructure — siloed, slow, expensive and inflexible. Meanwhile, DeFi provides lightning-fast, cost-effective, interoperable infrastructure but lacks mainstream accessibility.

The solution? Combine fintech’s distribution and user experience with DeFi’s efficient back end.

The mullet is inevitable

Fintech companies heavily rely on traditional financial (TradFi) infrastructure that is siloed, slow to deploy and run, and costly to maintain. This inefficiency limits their control over costs and product offerings and has potential infrastructure risks. Fintechs have a strong incentive to transition to building on autonomous, credibly neutral public infrastructure.

Bitcoin’s next explosive move could send the asset to $250,000 by the end of 2025, according to Scott Melker, a crypto analyst and host of The Wolf of All Streets podcast.

Speaking in a recent interview, Melker cited growing institutional interest and diminishing volatility as key factors that could drive the next leg up.

“250K this year, totally possible,” Melker said, adding that Bitcoin (BTC)’s volatility has declined significantly in recent years.

“It used to be about three times as volatile as the S&P. Now it’s less than two times.” He pointed to increased involvement from pension funds and ETF issuers as evidence of a more mature, stable market.

The shift, he argued, reflects a broader trend of institutional adoption. “The more institutional money, the more Wall Street money, the more long-term holders get involved, the less volatility there’s going to be,” Melker explained.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has held discussions with Everstake, one of the largest non-custodial staking providers globally, to explore clearer regulatory definitions around staking in blockchain networks.

The meeting, which also involved the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, comes at a time when over $193 billion in digital assets are staked across major proof-of-stake (PoS) networks.

However, despite the massive scale of participation, staking remains in a legal gray zone in the US as regulators wrestle with its classification under existing securities law.

The previous SEC administration also took enforcement actions against major players such as Kraken, Coinbase, and Consensys due to their staking services. The agency, under pro-crypto President Donald Trump, has recently dismissed these enforcement actions.

During the meeting, Everstake told the SEC that non-custodial staking should not be classified as a securities transaction. The company said that users maintain full control over their digital assets throughout the staking process and do not transfer ownership to a third party.

A man from Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, has been arrested in connection with an FBI-led investigation into a global cryptocurrency fraud operation that allegedly stole $450 million New Zealand dollars ($265 million).

According to New Zealand Police, the man is one of 13 individuals charged after authorities executed search warrants across Auckland, Wellington, and California over the past three days.

The charges stem from allegations that members of an organized criminal group manipulated seven victims to obtain large amounts of cryptocurrency, which was then laundered through multiple platforms between March and August 2024.

The US Department of Justice has indicted the man under federal law, including charges of racketeering, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, per the announcement.

Related: Germany seizes $38M in crypto from Bybit hack-linked eXch exchange

Panama City Mayor Mayer Mizrachi has hinted at establishing a city-level Bitcoin reserve in a cryptic post following his meeting with two of El Salvador’s Bitcoin policy leaders.

“Bitcoin Reserve,” Mizrachi wrote to X on May 16 after meeting El Salvador-based Bitcoiners Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert.

While Mizrachi didn’t share details about his discussions with Keiser and Herbert, the timing of the post came 11 days before the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, where Mizrachi is scheduled to speak.

The creation of a Bitcoin reserve in Panama City would follow a recently approved measure permitting the use of crypto for public payments, including taxes, fines and municipal fees.

Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Tether (USDT) and USDC (USDC) will be accepted once the crypto-to-fiat payment rails are established, Mizrachi said at the time.

Paraguayan law enforcement has deported three individuals and arrested another for attempting to steal crypto miners at a facility near the country’s Itaipu hydroelectric dam.

According to a May 15 statement from Paraguayan prosecutor Irene Rolón, the men were caught by police soon after breaking into a locked section of Teratech SA’s facility in Coronel Bogado, leading to their arrest.

Prosecutors believe the men may have had ties to Teratech as independent contractors, but are still waiting on official confirmation from the company’s CEO.

The three deported were Chinese nationals Jinping Duan, Tian Jianyun and Zheng Guanglong, who did not have official entry records into the country. Paraguayan authorities and Interpol believe the men illegally entered through Brazil or Bolivia.

The other person arrested, Nahun María Velázquez Garcete, is a legal resident in Paraguay but is believed to be part of a criminal organization.

Key takeaways:

Traders expect a Bitcoin price pullback to $90,000, but a bull flag could break out to new highs if profit taking near the range highs reduces.

On-chain data suggests the current profit taking is too weak to extinguish Bitcoin’s current price momentum.

Bitcoin (BTC) price has spent the bulk of the week pinned below $104,000 to $105,000, which many analysts have labelled as a resistance zone, but an alternative view suggests that BTC is simply consolidating within a bull flag.

A bull flag is a continuation pattern that is characterized by a period of sideways price action following a sharp uptrend, and when the structure confirms or breaks from the trendline resistance, the uptrend continues. 

Crypto entrepreneurs and their families in France will receive enhanced security measures amid a recent rise in crypto-related kidnappings in the country, Politico reported.

According to the May 16 report, the measures include priority access to police emergency lines, home security assessments, and safety briefings from French law enforcement to ensure best practices are being followed.

France’s Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau introduced the security measures as part of a broader effort to counter the recent wave of attacks.

Law enforcement officers will also undergo "anti-crypto asset laundering training,” Retailleau noted.

Retailleau met with several local leaders from the crypto industry to discuss the measures following three crypto-related kidnapping incidents in recent months.

Ripple’s legal chief said a US court’s rejection of a proposed XRP settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) does not pose a threat to Ripple’s win.

Judge Analisa Torres of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected a joint Ripple-SEC motion seeking an indicative ruling on their proposed settlement, according to a filing on May 15.

Ripple’s chief legal officer, Stuart Alderoty, said the rejection does not reverse the company’s victory in the case. The company announced the end of the lawsuit on March 19.

Alderoty stressed that the latest court decision does not change the fact that XRP (XRP) is not a security, adding that the rejection is related to “procedural concerns with the dismissal of Ripple’s cross-appeal.”

Why did the court refuse to grant the ruling?

According to the court document, Torres denied the motion as “procedurally improper” since the SEC and Ripple failed to file the correct procedural motion to support the proposed settlement.

Shares of luxury watchmaker Top Win surged more than 60% in premarket trading after the company said it would adopt a Bitcoin accumulation strategy and had changed its name to AsiaStrategy.

In a May 16 announcement, AsiaStrategy said it is partnering with Sora Ventures to adopt a Bitcoin (BTC) treasury strategy. Sora previously partnered with Metaplanet in 2024 to create Japan’s first corporate Bitcoin treasury.

The stock market took immediate notice of the announcement. Top Win stock closed the trading day at $7.50 on May 15, but traded at $12.12 in premarket at the time of writing — a jump of over 60%.

AsiaStrategy’s luxury watchmaking business will continue alongside its Bitcoin accumulation strategy, rather than a full pivot.

Related: Jim Chanos takes opposing bets on Bitcoin and Strategy

Why did Fantom reinvent itself as Sonic?

Fantom was one of the pioneers of the directed acyclic graph (DAG) design for distributed ledgers. It featured fast finality and transaction fees of a fraction of a cent. However, Fantom relied on the Ethereum-derived account storage model and the EVM, which led to bloated storage and slow execution times.

To address these bottlenecks and implement numerous other updates, the team behind Fantom rolled out Sonic, a fully independent new blockchain network. A new report by HTX  explores Sonic's technological background, its new tokenomics model and the innovations it brings to DeFi.  

Download a full version of the report for free here

Sonic’s technical architecture

Sonic runs on the proprietary SonicVM execution engine, which dynamically translates EVM bytecode into a faster internal format for speedier execution. It also optimizes heavy computations to prevent repeated work and pre-analyzes contract code to cache valid jump destinations. The SonicVM is fully compatible with the EVM, meaning that Fantom smart contracts can run seamlessly on the new blockchain.

To address the issue of hefty onchain data storage and slow node synchronization, Sonic uses a new database design called SonicDB. SonicDB separates the blockchain state into two databases. It uses the LiveDB for fast access to the current state and execution, and the ArchiveDB for storing full historical data. This separation allows consensus nodes to cut data storage requirements by up to 90% and thus significantly reduces hardware requirements and synchronization time.

Tokenization could open new opportunities for retail investors to access traditionally restricted asset classes, according to Johann Kerbrat, senior vice president and general manager of Robinhood Crypto, who called it “very important for financial inclusion.”

Speaking at the Consensus 2025 event in Toronto, Kerbrat said that some real-world assets, such as real estate and private equity, are available only to up to 10% of the US population. “You need to be an accredited investor to invest in private equity right now,” he said.

“How many people can afford a house or an apartment in New York?” he elaborated. “But you can get a piece of it with fractionalization, through tokenization. And so we think it makes it a lot easier to be exchanged, a lot more accessible for everybody.”

Robinhood has been one of a handful of investment firms or brokerages that have explored RWA tokenization in recent months. Others include BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Apollo, and VanEck.

RWA tokenization is often touted as a means to enhance financial accessibility, with most tokenized funds currently concentrated on the private credit and US treasury markets. According to RWA.xyz on May 16, the total market capitalization of onchain RWA is $22.5 billion across just 101,457 asset holders. On average, each holder owns $221,867 in onchain assets.

The Filecoin Foundation and Lockheed Martin Space have successfully transmitted data in space using a version of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) on a satellite orbiting Earth, Marta Belcher, president of the Filecoin Foundation, told Cointelegraph. 

Filecoin and Lockheed Martin adapted the system for use in space and successfully tested it, Belcher said during the Consensus 2025 conference in Toronto.

The IPFS enhances privacy and security compared to traditional web protocols, such as HTTP, by identifying data based on its content rather than its location. This has additional benefits for data transmission in space, Belcher said.

“The architecture is well-suited to space because it reduces delays, compensates for data corruption caused by radiation, and enables cryptographic verification to ensure data has not been tampered with,” she said.

The foundation is a nonprofit governing the decentralized cloud storage protocol Filecoin (FIL), which uses the IPFS web protocol to store data. Lockheed Martin is one of the world’s largest aerospace companies.