U.S. CFTC Acting Chairman: Enforcement Division Restructured, Refocused on Combating Fraud

April 5 (Axios) — Over the past 10 days, the U.S. and Iran have held indirect talks via Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey aimed at a ceasefire deal tied to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, but no substantive progress has been made to date. Lead negotiators include U.S. Vice President Vance and Iranian Parliament Speaker Kalibaf, with Pakistani Army Chief General Asim Munir serving as mediator. White House envoy Witkoff and the foreign ministers of Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt have also joined the discussions. Two sources briefed on the talks said mediators are still pushing to arrange a direct U.S.-Iran meeting, but progress has been minimal. One source noted Iran has rejected all temporary ceasefire proposals so far, demanding a permanent end to the conflict and explicit U.S. assurances against future attacks. Mediators are now weighing confidence-building measures to clear the path for direct talks, though it’s unclear if progress will be made ahead of Monday’s deadline.

On April 5th, data from Farside monitoring shows U.S. Bitcoin spot ETFs posted a cumulative net inflow of $22.2 million this week, while Ethereum spot ETFs recorded a net outflow of $42.1 million.

April 5th — Market sources report that a preliminary probe into the Drift hacking incident has found team members were previously approached in person by a North Korean intermediary at a conference.

On April 5th, data from Coinglass shows that if Bitcoin drops below $65,000, the cumulative intensity of long liquidations across mainstream centralized exchanges (CEXs) will hit $600 million. Conversely, if Bitcoin climbs above $69,000, the cumulative intensity of short liquidations on these CEXs will reach $570 million. **Note from BlockBeats**: The liquidation chart does not display the exact number of contracts or their total value being liquidated. Instead, the bars on the chart represent how important each liquidation cluster is relative to nearby clusters—i.e., "intensity." In short, the chart shows how much impact reaching a specific price level will have. A taller liquidation bar means that price hitting that level will trigger a more intense response due to a liquidity cascade.

On April 5, Crowdfund Insider reported Western Union has completed its acquisition of Dash, a Singapore-based digital wallet company formerly owned by Singtel. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. This marks the U.S. payment firm’s first digital wallet in the Asia-Pacific region and signals its push beyond traditional remittance services into digital financial offerings.

April 5 (NBC) — Prediction market platform Polymarket has issued an apology for allowing users to wager on the fate of a U.S. pilot whose fighter jet was shot down over Iran. Earlier, a U.S. official confirmed a two-seat F-15E “Strike Eagle” was downed Friday: one crew member was rescued, the other remains missing. A now-deleted market let users bet on when the pilot would be rescued (most guessed Saturday), with the title: “US Confirms Pilot Will Be Rescued on...?” U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton — a former Marine veteran who served in Iraq — slammed the market on X, calling it “outrageous” that people would wager while Iran conducts a perilous search-and-rescue operation. In response to Moulton’s post, Polymarket apologized and said it had taken the market down. “We immediately removed the market as it does not align with our integrity standards,” the company stated. “This content should not have been posted, and we are investigating how it bypassed our internal review processes.”