According to DB News, the DOJ is cleared to sell 69,370 $BTC($6.58B) confiscated from Silk Road.

April 22 — Per Bloomberg, cryptocurrency tycoon Li Lin is moving his 20-person trading team from his family office Avenir Group to Bitfire Group, a wealth management firm where he holds a 30% stake. The transfer aims to help Bitfire attract more private banking clients. Hong Kong-listed Bitfire CEO Livio Weng told reporters in an interview that Bitfire will acquire the team and its trading system from Avenir Group. Avenir has confirmed the transaction. Following the team’s addition, Bitfire has secured initial investment commitments of roughly $500 million from Avenir (Li’s family office) and the listed company. Bitfire launched its private banking arm in August 2023 and has since onboarded around 300 clients, primarily family offices, listed companies, and high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs). The firm plans to expand its Ethereum and stablecoin trading strategies later this year, with expectations that its private banking assets under management (AUM) will exceed $1 billion

April 22nd — CoinDesk reports the highly anticipated U.S. cryptocurrency industry’s *Digital Asset Market Structure Clarity Act* has little chance of advancing in April. But lobbyists tracking the bill’s progress and a congressional aide say a Senate committee is expected to hold a hearing sometime in May; the key market structure legislation still has a “survival” shot so long as it secures a full Senate vote by July. The Senate aide noted the bill could face an additional few weeks of delay to let Republican Sen. Thom Tillis wrap up discussions with the banking industry on stablecoin yields, but it hasn’t reached a point of no return. Earlier negotiations over the DeFi protection clause are largely settled. The crypto industry’s top hurdle is the banking sector’s pushback against stablecoin rewards — banking lobbyists fear the stablecoin reward model could mirror deposit yields, threatening their business models. Post-August, the Senate will enter midterm election mode, with on

**On-chain analyst Specter (@SpecterAnalyst) reports that North Korean hacker group TraderTraitor launched a money laundering operation for funds stolen from KelpDAO early this morning Beijing time—just three hours after the Arbitrum Council froze 37,000 ETH (≈$71 million).** The attacker split the remaining funds into three wallets, holding roughly 25,000 ETH (≈$57.6M), 25,700 ETH (≈$59.2M), and 25,000 ETH (≈$57.9M, respectively). The third wallet immediately began laundering, with only ~3,800 ETH (≈$8M) remaining as of now. Funds were primarily bridged to the Bitcoin network via THORChain: ~99% flowed through the protocol, pushing THORChain’s daily transaction volume to $2.11 billion—over 10x its 30-day average—and generating ~$189,000 in fees. During laundering, the funds were mixed with proceeds from the 2025 BTC Turk and 2025 Bybit hacks, with ~442 BTC (≈$33M) traced on the Bitcoin network. The entire process involved over 400 addresses.

April 22: U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted: "Iran doesn’t want the Strait of Hormuz closed. They want it open because they’d make $500 million a day from it—they’d lose that income if it were closed. They say they want to close the strait because I already imposed a total blockade on them; they’re just trying to ‘save face.’ Four days ago, someone came to me and said: Iran wants to immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But if we do that, we can never reach an agreement with Iran unless we destroy the rest of their country, including its leadership!"

The Solana wallet fent.sol, possibly linked to OG $PEPE whale dimethyltryptamine.eth, bought 5.66M $SPIKE 5 hours ago. dimethyltryptamine.eth is a legend! He spent only 0.125 $ETH($251) to buy 5.9T $PEPE($100M at peak) and sold 3.94T $PEPE for $5.74M, leaving 1.97T $PEPE($7.5M) - a 52,600x return.

April 22 (CoinDesk) — Prediction market platform Kalshi is gearing up to launch cryptocurrency trading in the U.S., expanding beyond its core prediction market business. Sources familiar with the matter say the platform will first roll out perpetual contracts tied to assets like Bitcoin. This move will place Kalshi in more direct competition with crypto platforms such as Coinbase. Coinbase currently does not offer true perpetual contracts in the U.S., though it has introduced "perpetual-style" futures contracts with longer tenors and has signaled interest in launching more advanced derivative products stateside. Kalshi holds multiple licenses from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and recently gained approval to offer margin trading, meeting requirements to enter the derivatives market. Sources note the company intends to start with crypto-linked perpetual contracts and may later expand this model to other asset classes. Kalshi rival Polymarket also announced T