Martin Shkreli’s claim he forfeited all copies of Wu-Tang album ‘dubious,’ says PleasrDAO

Prediction marketplace Kalshi has started taking Bitcoin (BTC) deposits in a bid to onboard more crypto-native users.The company that lets users bet on events ranging from election outcomes to Rotten Tomatoes film ratings has seen a strong uptake among crypto traders, Kalshi told Cointelegraph on April 9. For instance, event contracts for betting on Bitcoin’s hour-by-hour price changes have seen $143 million in trading volume to date, a spokesperson said.Kalshi is a derivatives exchange regulated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). As of April 9, it listed some 50 crypto-related event contracts, including markets for betting on coins’ 2025 highs and lows, as well as on headlines such as US President Donald Trump’s proposed National Bitcoin Reserve. Kalshi has doubled down on crypto event contract markets. Source: KalshiThe platform started accepting crypto payments in October when it enabled stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) deposits. Kalshi relies on ZeroHash — a crypto payments infrastructure provider — for off-ramping BTC and USDC and converting the deposits to US dollars. The exchange accepts BTC deposits only from the Bitcoin network. Most Kalshi traders no longer expect core tokens to earn positive returns this year. Source: KalshiRelated: Kalshi traders place the odds of US recession in 2025 at over 61%More accurate than pollsLaunched in 2021, Kalshi rose to prominence ahead of the US’s November elections. It became a top venue for trading on 2024 political events after winning a lawsuit against the CFTC, which tried to block Kalshi from listing contracts tied to elections. The regulator argued that political prediction markets threaten the integrity of elections, but industry analysts say they often capture public sentiment more accurately than polls. For instance, prediction markets, including Kalshi, accurately predicted Trump’s presidential election win even as polls indicated a tossup.“Event contract markets are a valuable public good for which there is no evidence of significant manipulation or widespread use for any nefarious purposes that the Commission alleges,” Harry Crane, a statistics professor at Rutgers University, said in an August comment letter filed with the CFTC.As of April 9, Kalshi traders peg the odds of the US entering a recession at 68%, according to its website. In March, Kalshi partnered with Robinhood to bring prediction markets to the popular online brokerage platform. Robinhood’s stock rose some 8% on the news. Kalshi competes with Polymarket, a Web3-based prediction platform. Polymarket processed more than $3 billion in trading volumes tied to the US presidential election despite being off-limits for US traders.Magazine: Bitcoin heading to $70K soon? Crypto baller funds SpaceX flight: Hodler’s Digest, March 30 – April 5

As markets reel from geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainty, Bitcoin has shown relative resilience during events like Trump’s recent tariff bombshells, according to Blockstream CEO Adam Back.While in the short term, Bitcoin (BTC) may move in tandem with stocks and other risk-on assets, Back sees the long-term trend telling a different story.“Bitcoin is fully decoupled because it’s gone up five or six times since the bottom of the market three years ago,” he said during an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph at Paris Blockchain Week.Back, who is one of the original cypherpunks and a key contributor to Bitcoin’s early development, predicts strong adoption tailwinds for BTC: regulatory clarity, institutional interest, and the legitimizing force of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). He notes that while most long-term holders are already “all in” and unable to buy dips, entities like BlackRock and sovereign wealth funds are stepping in, quietly absorbing supply.The Blockstream CEO also touches on the geopolitical dimension, discussing a scenario in which governments may begin actively acquiring Bitcoin. “If the US government doesn’t go on a buying spree and buy 1 million Bitcoin over the next five years, that gives more time for the new entrants who’ve got access finally through brokers and through the ETFs to build up the Bitcoin position.”Despite short-term volatility, Back remains firmly bullish on the mid-term outlook: “Typically, there would be half a dozen 30% drops in a bull market, so I think that’s probably where we are now.”Watch the full interview now on the Cointelegraph’s YouTube channel — and subscribe for more exclusive conversations with the biggest names in crypto.

United States securities laws are not flexible enough to account for digital assets, as evidenced by the parade of crypto-native companies that have tried and failed to get into the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) good graces, Rodrigo Seira, special counsel to Cooley LLP, told a House Committee hearing on April 9.The hearing, titled American Innovation and the Future of Digital Assets Aligning the U.S. Securities Laws for the Digital Age, featured Seira, WilmerHale partner Tiffany J. Smith, Polygon chief legal officer Jake Werrett and Alexandra Thorn, a senior director at the Center for American Progress.“It is clear that the current securities regulatory framework is not a viable option to regulate crypto. It fails to achieve its stated policy goals,” Seira said in his opening remarks. “[T]he idea that crypto projects can come in and register with the SEC is demonstrably false.”Cooley LLP special counsel Rodrigo Seira addresses the committee on April 9. Source: House Committee on Financial ServicesSeira acknowledged that crypto promoters who raise capital for a new enterprise should be subject to federal securities laws. “In practice, however, virtually no crypto projects have successfully registered their tokens under federal securities laws and lived to tell the tale,” he said, adding: Projects that tried to comply with [the] SEC’s current regulatory requirements expended significant resources and effort only to fail or survive in a state of regulatory uncertainty. Moreover, registration is not a simple one-time process. Registering a token in the same manner as a stock triggers an obligation to operate as a publicly reporting company .”Related: Crypto has a regulatory capture problem in Washington — or does it?Righting the shipIn introducing the witnesses, Representative Bryan Steil, who heads the Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and Artificial Intelligence, acknowledged regulatory roadblocks, which he said were put in place by the previous administration. Congressman Bryan Steil addresses the hearing on April 9. Source: House Committee on Financial ServicesUnder President Donald Trump, lawmakers are attempting to right the ship by passing sensible legislation, said Steil.One of the first steps occurred last week when the House Financial Services Committee advanced the STABLE Act, which is designed to regulate payment stablecoins tied to the US dollar and other fiat currencies. Source: Financial Services GOPA month earlier, the Senate Banking Committee advanced the GENIUS Act, which aims to regulate stablecoin issuers by establishing reserve requirements and requiring full compliance with Anti-Money Laundering laws.The next step is “advancing the second half of this agenda: comprehensive digital asset market structure legislation,” said Steil.Representative Ro Khanna told a digital asset conference last month that a market structure bill will cross the finish line this year. The purpose of such legislation is to establish a clear regulatory framework for digital assets, including their legal categories and the enforcement jurisdiction of agencies such as the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.Magazine: Unstablecoins: Depegging, bank runs and other risks loom