Crypto News and Regulatory Updates: Key Developments Shaping the Industry

Circle looking to go public at $4-$5 billion valuation: The stablecoin giant is reportedly looking for a valuation of between $4-$5 billion, with shares debuting on the New York Stock Exchange as early as this month. In its prospectus, Circle reported $156 million in net income on nearly $1.7 billion in venue last year. The timing of the public offer is key: Stablecoin legislation has tremendous traction here in the U.S., while Circle received a bump in the E.U. when Binance delisted Tether’s USDT in the E.U. (USDC is MiCA-compliant; USDT is not.) Those two factors could combine to pay dividends for Circle as it hits the public markets.

Trump family jumping into bitcoin mining, looking to go public: A group of investors including the President’s sons Don Jr. and Eric are launching a venture with the mining operator Hut 8. The result is American Bitcoin Corp., which will be majority owned by Hut 8 and focus on bitcoin mining and “strategic bitcoin reserve development.” After the deal went public, Hut 8’s CEO told Bloomberg he envisioned Hut 8 and American Bitcoin operating as “two sister publicly traded companies.”

Trump pardons BitMEX, execs: In granting the exchange a reprieve from its conviction and $100 million fine for money-laundering, the President has apparently issued the first-ever pardon of a business entity. Never say crypto isn’t at the vanguard. The President also pardoned BitMEX’s co-founders — Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed — who also pled guilty to money-laundering-related charges and were sentenced to various terms of probation, along with fines. For those interested in the instant legal question here, Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution gives the President the power to “grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States.” So query whether the pardon power focuses on the “Offences” rather than the person — or crypto exchange — convicted of them.

Pectra upgrade set for May 7: Core Ethereum developers set the target date after a successful test run on the Hoodi testnet. Once live, Pectra will bring 11 key modifications, including increasing the validator limit from 32 ETH to 2,048 and increasing rollup scalability.

House stablecoin bill clears key committee: The House Financial Services Committee voted 32-17, with six Democrats joining all but one Republican, to advance the legislation to the full House. The Senate’s own stablecoin bill cleared the Banking Committee last month.

Stablecoin chain developer Codex raises $16 million seed round: The startup, which is designing a stablecoin-specific blockchain, says that its single-purpose platform can deliver in ways that general-purpose chains can’t. Codex’s chain will be an Optimism L2, and they envision the chain will have fees that don’t fluctuate with usage, built-in on- and off-ramps, and the ability for some users to make certain transaction data confidential. The raise was led by Dragonfly Capital with participation from Coinbase, Circle, and others.

Coinbase Derivatives looking to list XRP futures in the coming weeks: The exchange filed certifications with the CFTC to list two products, XRP futures and “nano” XRP futures contracts — sized at 10,000 and 500 XRP, respectively — as soon as April 21.