Top Stories of The Week
Tether freezes over $500M of USDT in 30 days, BlockSec data shows
Tether has frozen more than $514 million in USDT across Ethereum and Tron over the past 30 days, according to onchain data from BlockSec’s USDT Freeze Tracker, highlighting the stablecoin issuer’s growing role in crypto-related enforcement actions.
As of Friday, the tool shows 370 addresses blacklisted in that period, including 328 on Tron and 42 on Ethereum, with about $505.9 million frozen on Tron and $8.73 million on Ethereum.
The figures indicate that most recent enforcement activity is concentrated on Tron and highlight how often the world’s largest stablecoin issuer is intervening onchain to immobilize funds flagged as high-risk or linked to investigations.
Strategy CEO Phong Le says company will sell BTC only in specific cases
Phong Le, the CEO of Bitcoin treasury company Strategy, outlined conditions in a Friday interview under which the company would sell some of its Bitcoin holdings.
The company will sell Bitcoin to pay the dividend on its Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock (STRC), a corporate credit instrument that pays an 11.5% dividend to holders, and to defer or offset taxes, Le told CNBC. He added:
“I believe in math over ideology, and at the point where selling Bitcoin versus selling equity to pay a dividend is better for our Bitcoin per share, and for our common shareholders, we will do it.”
Trump Media posts $406M quarterly loss as crypto bets turn sour
Trump Media & Technology Group posted a $405.9 million net loss in the first quarter of 2026, up from $31.7 million a year earlier, amid growing unrealized losses on its crypto holdings.
The parent company of Truth Social booked $244 million in unrealized losses on its Bitcoin position and a further $108.2 million in investment losses tied mostly to equity securities, with nearly $370 million of the quarter’s total losses stemming from digital asset and equity markdowns, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The losses mostly trace back to Bitcoin purchases made at last summer’s market peak. Trump Media bought roughly 9,500 Bitcoin at an average cost of around $108,519 per coin. By March 31, the company held 9,542 Bitcoin with a cost basis of $1.13 billion but a fair value of just $647 million, a gap of nearly $500 million. The position has since recovered somewhat, now worth around $770 million with Bitcoin trading above $80,000.
Kelp DAO exploit prompts DeFi protocols to rethink oracle providers
Decentralized finance protocols are reevaluating their blockchain oracle providers’ security after the fallout from the $293 million Kelp DAO exploit last month. Several protocols have announced migrations to Chainlink infrastructure in recent days, citing security concerns around third-party oracle and bridge providers.
On Thursday, Bitcoin DeFi platform Solv Protocol announced it would migrate to Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) and replace LayerZero bridges, citing an “extensive security review” concluding that CCIP provided the “strongest security assurances.”
A day earlier, liquidity protocol Tydro also said it was moving to Chainlink after its previous oracle provider, Chaos Labs, suffered an incident that prompted Tydro to pause markets over concerns about inaccurate price feeds.
Coinbase restores trading after AWS outage disrupts markets
Crypto exchange Coinbase has restored trading across its exchange, website and mobile apps after an Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage forced the crypto platform to limit markets before reopening them in stages.
The service disruption began around 8:00 pm ET on Thursday, when Coinbase systems flagged high error rates across multiple services. AWS said increased temperatures in a Northern Virginia data center impaired some infrastructure and forced it to shift traffic away from the affected Availability Zone.
The exchange placed markets in cancel-only mode during the disruption, then moved through auction mode before re-enabling trading, according to Coinbase public updates. Cancel-only mode allows users to cancel existing orders but prevents new trades from being executed. After that, Coinbase Support said all Coinbase Exchange markets were re-enabled for trading at 7:48 am UTC, followed by coinbase.com and its iOS and Android apps at 9:25 am UTC.
Winners and Losers
At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $80,912, Ether (ETH) at $2,327 and XRP (XRP) at $1.43. The total market cap is at $2.69 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.
Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin winners of the week are Toncoin (TON) at 80.69%, siren (SIREN) at 66.34% and Venice Token (VVV) at 64.19%. The top three altcoin losers of the week are Sky (SKY) at 2.14%, Pi (PI) at 1.50% and UNUS SED LEO (LEO) at 1.04%.
Top…
cointelegraph-magazine.com