Author: NBTC

An unregistered overseas crypto exchange, KCEX, continues to operate in South Korea despite a government ban, leveraging a loophole through the iOS App Store. This situation reveals significant gaps in the country’s regulatory framework for virtual asset service providers. As of April 22, 2025, the exchange remains accessible to South Korean users, undermining efforts to enforce financial oversight. KCEX Unregistered Exchange: Background and Timeline South Korean financial authorities flagged KCEX for unregistered business activities in August 2024. The exchange, based overseas, never obtained the necessary license from the Financial Services Commission (FSC). Despite this, it continues to attract users through…

Deloitte and Touche LLP has completed a SOC 2 Type 2 examination for Chainlink’s CCIP and Data Feeds, making Chainlink the only data and interoperability oracle platform in the blockchain industry to hold SOC 2 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 1, and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certifications simultaneously, the full stack of security credentials that institutional risk teams require before deployment. Chainlink announced on X that Deloitte and Touche LLP has completed a SOC 2 Type 2 examination for Chainlink CCIP and Data Feeds, including Price Feeds and SmartData feeds such as Proof of Reserve and Net Asset Value. The examination was…

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has called on the United States Congress to pass comprehensive digital asset legislation during his testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on the Treasury Department’s fiscal year 2027 budget request. He has argued that American leadership in the cryptocurrency space is vital to maintaining the global primacy of the U.S. dollar. “The U.S. has to lead here” During the hearing, Senator John Boozman (R-AR) pressed Bessent on the urgency of passing digital asset legislation, noting the recent progress made by the Senate Agriculture Committee. Bessent responded with a firm endorsement of establishing a clear, proactive regulatory…

Frankfurt, Germany – In a significant development for regulated cryptocurrency access, the Valour Hedera ($HBAR) Exchange Traded Product (ETP) has secured a substantial $11 million institutional investment. This capital infusion, announced by Valour, a subsidiary of DeFi Technologies, demonstrates growing institutional confidence in the Hedera network. The investment specifically targets Valour’s $HBAR ETP listed on the prestigious Börse Frankfurt. Consequently, this move signals a maturing phase for digital asset investment vehicles within traditional European finance. Valour $HBAR ETP Attracts Major Institutional Capital The $11 million investment represents a clear vote of confidence from institutional investors. Specifically, $10 million flowed directly…

MarsCat has partnered with Crypto Burger to enhance their existing deepening relationship due to an increasing overlap between artificial intelligence and blockchain’s sovereignty. MarsCat will utilize Bitcoin’s security layers as the foundation for a new generation of on-chain AI agents. By combining their infrastructure, which emphasizes privacy and the Crypto Burger AI network, the partnership enhances its technological capability. Their goal is to help solve a problem by allowing users to have complete ownership and monetize their generated intelligence, as well as not depending upon conventional centralized cloud service providers. The Shift Toward Sovereign AI Ownership The main idea behind…

Input Output, the private engineering company that built and continues to develop the Cardano blockchain, is seeking about half the funding it requested last year from the project’s community treasury. The company submitted nine proposals totaling $46.8 million for 2026 on Tuesday, down from $97.5 million in 2025. Several of the proposals focus on scaling Cardano to increase its transaction processing capacity and expanding into Bitcoin DeFi. Cardano, like most major blockchains, maintains a shared pool of money funded by network fees, which community representatives vote to allocate toward development work. Input Output historically has been the largest recipient because…

Binance has introduced a new feature called the Alpha Page. This provides a clearer view of early-stage crypto projects that the platform hosts. The Alpha page gives users structured data and performance insights to help them track projects from early activity to potential exchange listings. The Alpha Page on Binance is built as a central hub that pulls together key details about what Binance calls “Alpha projects.” These are early-stage crypto projects whose growth phase is not yet over. Users can see historical performance, participation metrics, and track the progress of these tokens over time. The platform said this approach…

DGrid AI, a popular AI infrastructure platform, has announced the integration of x402 micropayments through $BNB Chain. The integration denotes a landmark move toward the provision of streamlined AI monetization. As per the DGrid AI’s official press release, the upgrade permits autonomous agents and developers to call any of the AI models on the platform. Additionally, they can also settle rapidly with $USD1, within the API request span. 🚀 x402 micropayments on @BNBChain are now fully integrated into DGrid.⚡ With the frictionless x402 payment flow, any developer or autonomous agent can call any AI model on DGrid and settle instantly…

Firelight and Sentora wire native, capital-backed cover into $XRP DeFi vaults on Flare, turning FXRP staking into institutional-grade exploit and oracle protection. Firelight Protocol has partnered with Sentora to embed a capital-backed protection layer directly into Sentora’s institutional DeFi vault infrastructure, which already oversees billions of dollars in deployed strategies for platforms including Kraken and Fireblocks. Announced in Dubai on April 23, the integration is designed to offer native cover for technical and economic risks across Sentora’s public and private vaults, aiming squarely at institutional allocators that have so far treated DeFi with caution. Under the partnership, Firelight will function…

Kalshi, one of the leading prediction market firms, has issued another set of insider-trading disciplinary actions against users accused of making improper trades based on their inside knowledge of their own political situations, including an ex-reality TV star in Virginia who said he did it intentionally. “Cases like these demonstrate Kalshi’s commitment to policing all types of unfair or improper trading on our platform,” the company said in a statement posted on its website on Wednesday. “Regardless of the size of a trade, political candidates who can influence a market based on whether they stay in or out of a…