Crypto Payments Companies Achieve Licenses, Enhance Product Offerings
By Robert A. Musiala Jr.
A U.S. digital asset payments company, MoonPay, recently announced that it has been granted a BitLicense by the New York Department of Financial Services. According to a company blog post, the license establishes MoonPay “as one of a limited number of crypto payments companies authorized to conduct virtual currency business activity in New York State.”
In other licensing news, Ripple, a major U.S. fintech and digital assets company, recently announced that its stablecoin, RLUSD, “has been approved as a recognized crypto token by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) for use within the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).” A Ripple press release notes that in addition to the new DFSA approval, “RLUSD is one of the few stablecoins globally to be issued under a New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) Trust Company Charter.”
In a third press release, Rain, a “global card issuing platform powered by stablecoins,” announced native support for three major blockchain networks. According to the press release, the integrations will enable users of the Rain platform “to quickly launch compliant card programs and bring stablecoin utility to real-world payments, including consumer and B2B spending, cross-border disbursements, and platform payouts.”
A final notable press release announced that a major Ethereum development company has acquired Web3Auth, a leading “Wallet-as-a-Service” provider “that empowers every user to manage a non-custodial wallet intuitively.” According to the press release, the acquisition will help the company simplify wallet management, improve security and drive seamless onboarding for users of MetaMask digital asset wallets. The press release further notes that “[b]y integrating Web3Auth’s capabilities, MetaMask users will be able to create and recover wallets using familiar web2 authentication methods, such as social logins and device-based authentication, eliminating the requirement for users to manually back up seed phrases, reducing the likelihood of lost funds.”
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Financial Services Firms and Crypto Exchanges Launch Digital Asset Products
By Jonathan Cardenas
A major U.S. financial services and fintech company recently announced that it has closed its acquisition of a Luxembourg-based cryptocurrency exchange. The acquisition is designed to accelerate the fintech company’s international expansion and will leverage the exchange’s pre-existing licenses, registrations and customer base in over 50 jurisdictions across the U.S., the United Kingdom, the European Union and Asia. In addition, the acquisition will reportedly enable the fintech company to launch its first institutional client-focused crypto business, leveraging the exchange’s crypto-as-a-service, institutional lending and staking service offerings.
In related news, a major U.S. cryptocurrency exchange announced the launch of its prime brokerage solution for institutional clients. According to the press release, the prime brokerage service will enable the exchange to provide its asset management, hedge fund and corporate client base with access to digital asset trading, custody and financing services on a single platform. The prime brokerage platform will reportedly provide its institutional clients with access to “liquidity representing over 90% of the digital asset market across more than 20 global venues” and will support asset-backed lending, T+1 credit facilities and other services through a smart order routing system.
In a final development, the asset management division of a major U.S. financial services company recently announced that it will launch its Gold Protected Bitcoin Fund (Fund). The Fund will reportedly serve as the company’s first Bitcoin-focused investment vehicle and will combine Bitcoin exposure with downside protection that is based on the price of gold. According to the press release, the Fund is expected to begin accepting capital from its investor base over the coming weeks.
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VC Proposes Transition from Digital Asset Foundations to Company Networks
By John E. Robertson
In a recent article, a major U.S. venture capital firm, a16z crypto, recommends that crypto market actors transition away from the widely used foundation model and instead structure new digital asset platforms as company-managed networks. The article begins by noting new regulatory frameworks being considered by Congress. These frameworks, the article argues, remove the regulatory incentives that led to foundation networks and replace them with a regulatory framework in which a company network could thrive. The article continues by comparing and contrasting how foundation networks have built the crypto industry with how company networks may help cryptocurrency grow in the near future. This growth, in the article’s view, would be incentivized by public benefit corporations, network revenue sharing, milestone-vesting, contractual protections and programmatic incentivization.
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OFAC Sanctions Pig Butchering Tech Provider, Adds Public Keys to OFAC List
By Robert A. Musiala Jr.
On May 29, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced sanctions against “Funnull Technology Inc., a Philippines-based company that provides computer infrastructure for hundreds of thousands of websites involved in virtual currency investment scams, commonly known as ‘pig butchering,’ along with its administrator, Liu Lizhi.” According to a press release, “Funnull has directly facilitated several of these schemes, resulting in over $200 million in U.S. victim-reported losses.” The press release further notes that Funnull “enables virtual currency investment scams by purchasing IP addresses in bulk from major cloud services companies worldwide and selling them to cybercriminals to host scam platforms and other malicious web content.” As part of the action, OFAC added two new digital asset wallet addresses to the OFAC specially designated nationals (SDN) List.
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Hacks Continue To Plague Crypto Industry with $2.1B Reported Stolen in 2025
By Robert A. Musiala Jr.
According to recent reports, hacks of smart contract protocols and centralized exchanges have continued in recent weeks. In one incident, the Cetus decentralized crypto exchange (DEX), a trading platform built on the Sui network, reportedly lost $223 million in a hack of its smart contracts. In another smart contract attack, decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Cork Protocol lost $12 million. And in a third recent incident, BitoPro, a Taiwan-based crypto exchange, reportedly lost $11.5 million in a hack of its hot wallets.
Another recent incident highlights a growing trend in which hackers are targeting blockchain developers by deploying malware in sophisticated supply chain attacks on developer libraries. The recent incident involved a supply chain attack on the Python Package Index (PyPI), which is designed to deploy private key stealing malware on devices that download the PyPI.
According to Web3 security firm CertiK, a total of $2.1 billion in crypto has been stolen by hackers so far in 2025. Most losses are reportedly attributable to wallet compromises and phishing attacks, showing a trend in which hackers are shifting focus away from smart contract attacks and toward social engineering schemes.
Separately, PeckShield, another Web3 security firm, reported that crypto hackers stole a total of $244 million in the month of May. This reportedly represents a 40 percent decline from the month of April.
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