Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev denied bail while preparing appeal

United States lawmakers are on track to pass legislation setting rules for stablecoins and cryptocurrency market structure by as soon as August, Kristin Smith, CEO of industry advocacy group the Blockchain Association, said during Blockworks’ 2025 Digital Asset Summit in New York.Smith’s timeline echoes a similar forecast by Bo Hines, the executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, who said on March 18 that he expects to see comprehensive stablecoin legislation in the coming months. “I think we’re close to being able to get those done for August they’re doing a lot of work on that behind the scenes right now,” Smith said on March 19 at the Summit, which was attended by Cointelegraph. “I’m optimistic when you have the chairs of the relevant committees in the House and the Senate and the White House that want to do something and you’ve got bipartisan votes in Congress to get it there,” she added.US President Donald Trump sits beside Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at the March 7 White House Crypto Summit. Source: The Associated PressBipartisan supportAt the Digital Assets Summit on March 18, Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna said he believes Congress “should be able to get” both the stablecoin and crypto market structure bills passed in 2025. According to Khanna, approximately 70 to 80 Democrats see stablecoin legislation as important for promoting US influence by expanding access to dollars globally.“For the first time those are actually like something we’re able to get done, but to do that you need to have at least 7 Democratic votes in the Senate,” Smith said, adding that “we already have 5 votes at the committee level.”Last week, the Senate Banking Committee approved the GENIUS Act, which is an acronym for Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins. The proposed bill sets collateralization guidelines for stablecoin issuers and mandates compliance with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws.In 2024, the House of Representatives passed the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, also known as FIT21, which sets ground rules for crypto market structure. The bill still needs to pass in the Senate to become law. Executives in crypto have said that the industry will benefit more from US regulatory clarity than even the strategic Bitcoin reserve.On March 6, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile, fulfilling a campaign promise he made in 2024.“Markets expect a roadmap for innovation and clear guidelines on stablecoins, institutional adoption and taxation,” Max Giammario, CEO of Web3 artificial intelligence startup Kindred, told Cointelegraph in March.Magazine: Unstablecoins: Depegging, bank runs and other risks loom

The United States needs to establish a competitive moat around highly secure tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) to remain competitive in the age of borderless, permissionless finance, according to Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov.In an interview with Cointelegraph’s Turner Wright at the Digital Asset Summit in New York, Nazarov said that blockchain is a global phenomenon that relies on open-source software and distributed technology, unlike previous technological shifts.The executive added that the shift to online commerce, which gave the US a competitive advantage due to a five- to 10-year head start on the development of internet infrastructure, is not applicable in the age of digital finance. The executive told Cointelegraph:“The US really has to push its other two advantages of a very strong domestic market and the ability for it to create these highly reliable financial assets. And this is what I think the administration and the people in the legislature are now starting to understand.”Real-world tokenized assets could become a $100-trillion market in the coming years, as the world’s assets come onchain, the Chainlink executive predicted.Sergey Nazarov takes part in a panel at the 2025 Digital Asset Summit. Source: Turner Wright/CointelegraphRelated: Ethena Labs, Securitize launch blockchain for DeFi and tokenized assetsTokenized RWAs reach all-time highsAccording to RWA.xyz, real-world tokenized assets, excluding stablecoins, hit an all-time high in 2025, topping $18.8 billion.Private credit took up the lion’s share of the total RWA market capitalization, with over $12.2 billion in tokenized private credit instruments permeating the market at the time of this writing.Total tokenized real-world assets, excluding stablecoins. Source: RWA.xyzAsset tokenization can make previously illiquid asset classes, such as real estate, more liquid, eliminating the illiquidity discount inherent in physical properties.In February, Polygon CEO Marc Boiron told Cointelegraph that tokenizing real estate could fractionalize ownership, eliminate intermediaries, and lower settlement costs —transforming the slow-moving sector.This real estate overhaul can be seen in Turkey, with projects such as Lumia Towers, a 300-unit mixed-use commercial real estate development that was tokenized using Polygon’s technology. It’s also taking place in the United Arab Emirates, which is considered one of the hottest property markets in the world. Proactive digital asset regulations are driving a tokenized RWA boom in the Gulf state as institutional investors and developers flock to tokenization as an alternative method of capital formation.Magazine: Real life yield farming: How tokenization is transforming lives in Africa

The US Securities and Exchange Commission dropping its appeal against Ripple is the “final exclamation point that these [XRP] tokens are considered digital commodities, not securities,” crypto lawyer John Deaton told Cointelegraph.Deaton added that there is still a $125-million judgment against Ripple over the improper selling of the XRP (XRP) cryptocurrency, which perhaps the company can negotiate down now that the SEC has dropped its appeal.Deaton is a well-known lawyer who represented XRP holders, arguing that their interests were not being represented in the SEC’s case against Ripple. He’d later run against Elizabeth Warren, a vocal crypto critic, for a senate seat to represent Massachusetts in Washington, DC.Related: Why is the Ripple SEC case still ongoing amid a sea of resolutions?Will Ripple drop its cross-appeal?One factor that will play out going forward is Ripple’s cross-appeal, which was filed in October 2024. Deaton believes the SEC doesn’t want Ripple to proceed with the cross-appeal because a ruling could hurt the commission’s jurisdiction and affect other cases.That gives Ripple some leverage in negotiating the settlement. “Everything’s turned,” Deaton said. “The election’s turned, the industry turned, the SEC [has] completely done a 180 as it relates to the industry. Why should we pay $125 million?”However, there still is the issue of the injunction issued by Judge Analisa Torres, which prevents Ripple from selling XRP to institutional investors to prevent violation of securities laws.“If Ripple obviously wants to be able to issue XRP to banks in America directly, I think the hang-up is that injunction and how do you get past that injunction,” Deaton said.Related: XRP’s role in US Digital Asset Stockpile raises questions on token utility — Does it belong?Ripple case was an attack on the industry“I remember when this case was first filed,” Deaton told Cointelegraph, adding:“I thought it was an assault on the industry, like the boot on the neck of the industry, and I was confident that it wasn’t going to be just a one-off, that it wouldn’t just be Ripple, that it was more of a message that the traditional finance, the banking system, the Elizabeth Warrens and the Gary Genslers of the world, had it in for the industry.”He added that Ripple can appeal to the fact that it never left the US even after the SEC brought the case and that it is an American-made company.“I think it’s to do with Brad Garlinghouse being able to say, ‘Well, look, we got sued by the US government and the Biden administration; we’re an American-made company, you know, [and] we never left.’ And I think that bodes well.”Magazine: Hall of Flame: Crypto Banter’s Ran Neuner says Ripple is ‘despicable,’ tips hat to ZachXBT