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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.A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, told Bloomberg that Cuomo has been providing private legal services representing individuals and corporations on a variety of matters since resigning as New York governor.“He has not represented clients before a New York city or state agency and routinely recommends former colleagues for positions,”  Azzopardi added.OKX reportedly wasn’t willing to comment on its relationships with outside firms.Cuomo also influenced OKX to make executive appointments: BloombergCuomo, who is now running for mayor of New York City, also advised OKX to appoint his friend US Attorney Linda Lacewell to OKX’s board of directors, Bloomberg said.Lacewell, a former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, was added to the board in 2024 and was named OKX’s new chief legal officer on April 1, according to a recent company statement.Source: Linda LacewellRelated: New York bill aims to protect crypto investors from memecoin rug pullsAfter the investigation concluded, OKX said it would seek out a compliance consultant to remedy the issues stemming from the federal probe and bolster its regulatory compliance program.“Our vision is to make OKX the gold standard of global compliance at scale across different markets and their respective regulatory bodies,” OKX CEO Star Xu said in a Feb. 24 X post.Magazine: Financial nihilism in crypto is over — It’s time to dream big again

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. It is the fourth major update to Nightfall since EY launched the business-focused Ethereum layer 2 in 2019.Nightfall enables the firm’s business partners to transfer tokens privately using Ethereum’s security while being cheaper than the base network. It also uses a technology that binds a verified identity to a public key through digital signatures to try to stem counterparty risk.Nixed Tornado Cash sanctions “helped people feel comfortable”Brody said the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions on the crypto mixing service Tornado Cash “had a chilling effect on legitimate business user interest.”“Even though we long ago took steps to make Nightfall unattractive to bad actors, since it cannot be used anonymously, the removal of OFAC sanctions has really helped people feel comfortable that using a privacy technology will not be risky,” he added.Nightfall’s code is open source on GitHub but remains a permissioned blockchain for EY’s customer base, competing with the likes of the IBM-backed Hyperledger Fabric, R3 Corda and the Consensus-built Quorum.Brody said that EY’s blockchain team is working toward “a single environment that supports payments, logic, and composability.”Currently, the firm requires Nightfall and Starlight, a tool that can change smart contract code to enable zero-knowledge proofs “to enable complex multiparty business agreements under privacy,” he added.“We’ll spend some time supporting Nightfall_4 deployments initially,” Brody said. “Then we’ll move on to the development of Nightfall_5.”Magazine: What are native rollups? Full guide to Ethereum’s latest innovation 

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: CointelegraphTrump presented the tariffs through the lens of economic protectionism and hinted at returning to the economic policies of the 19th century by using them to replace the income tax.Related: Bitcoin rally to $88.5K obliterates bears as spot volumes soar — Will a tariff war stop the party?Trump proposes eliminating federal income tax and replacing it with tariff revenueTrump proposed the idea of abolishing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and funding the federal government exclusively through trade tariffs while still on the campaign trail in October 2024.According to accounting automation company Dancing Numbers, Trump’s plan could save each American taxpayer $134,809-$325,561 in taxes throughout their lives.US President Donald Trump addresses the media about reciprocal trade tariffs at the April 2 press event. Source: Fox 4 DallasThe higher range of the tax savings estimate will only occur if other wage-based taxes are eliminated at the state and municipal levels.Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who assumed office in February, also voiced support for replacing the IRS with the “External Revenue Service.”Lutnick said that the US government cannot balance a budget yet consistently demands more from its citizens every year. Tariffs will also protect American workers and strengthen the US economy, he said.Magazine: Elon Musk’s plan to run government on blockchain faces uphill battle

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 CommitteeThe 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.Related: Crypto has a regulatory capture problem in Washington — Or does it?According to Warren and Waters, Americans deserved transparency about Trump’s crypto ventures and how they could potentially influence policy at the SEC, a financial regulatory agency largely intended to be independent of the administration. The two called on Uyeda to preserve records and communications related to WLFI from Trump and his family, as well as communications with the SEC.“The American people deserve to know whether their financial markets are being regulated impartially or whether regulatory decisions are being made to benefit the President’s family financial interests,” wrote the Democratic lawmakers.The letter reiterated arguments Waters made in an April 2 House Financial Services Committee hearing. The California lawmaker said that without oversight and accountability, Trump could install WLFI’s stablecoin for government payments and profit directly from his position as president. Many other lawmakers and financial experts across the political spectrum have expressed concern over Trump’s potential conflicts of interest with the crypto industry.SEC leadership under TrumpSince Trump appointed Uyeda as acting chair, the SEC has dropped investigations and enforcement actions into several crypto firms, including those with executives who contributed directly to the president’s 2024 campaign. Paul Atkins, Trump’s pick to chair the SEC after Uyeda, is expected to face a vote in the Senate Banking Committee on April 3. If Atkins’ nomination moves out of committee, the full chamber will decide whether to confirm him.Magazine: Trump’s crypto ventures raise conflict of interest, insider trading questions

Today in crypto, First Digital’s stablecoin depegged after Justin Sun’s claims of insolvency. Meanwhile, VanEck became the first company to propose a potential BNB exchange-traded fund in the United States and stablecoin issuer Circle filed for a public listing on Wall Street. FDUSD stablecoin depegs following insolvency claims by Justin SunThe 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: CoinMarketCapVanEck eyes BNB ETF with latest Delaware trust filingInvestment company VanEck filed to register a Delaware trust company for an exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking Binance-linked BNB cryptocurrency.VanEck, on March 31, registered a new entity under the name VanEck BNB ETF in Delaware, according to public records on the official Delaware state website.VanEck BNB ETF trust registration in Delaware. Source: Delaware.govIn filing 10148820, the entity is registered as a trust corporate service company in Delaware, hinting at a potential spot BNB (BNB) ETF in the United States.Circle files for Initial Public Offering planned for AprilUSDC (USDC) stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on April 1 to go public later this month on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “CRCL.”Its Form S-1 registration statement didn’t detail the number of shares it would offer or what its initial public offering target price would be, but it did shed some light on the firm’s financials.The filing shows Circle’s revenue last year was $1.67 billion in revenue for 2024, a 16% year-on-year bump, while its 2024 net income was $155.6 million — a 41.8% fall from 2023.Circle’s financials over the last three years ended Dec. 31. Source: SECOver 99% of Circle’s revenue in 2024 came from its stablecoin reserves. The company issues the second-largest stablecoin by market cap behind only Tether (USDT) and generates part of its income by holding yield-bearing Treasury bills.Circle attempted to go public via a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) merger in 2021— which it abandoned in December 2022 — and again in January 2024 via a confidential filing with the SEC.