SEC Drops Binance Lawsuit in Huge Win for Crypto

Plus, 💸 Oracle sticks it to a trader, 🪙 Gold-backed BTC fund debuts, 💼 Low-cost Treasuries come to Algorand.

Author

Juan Aranovich
May 30, 2025

Hi! In today’s edition:

  • 🎉 Big day for Binance as SEC pulls suit 

  • 😱 Oracle price rips trader a new one

  • 📈 Bitcoin meets gold in new TradFi fund

  • 🏦 T-bills go DeFi with Midas on Algorand

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By Tikta

SEC Drops Binance Lawsuit 

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped its lawsuit against Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, ending one of the last major crypto enforcement actions initiated during the Biden administration.

The SEC and Binance filed a joint stipulation in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia requesting the dismissal of the lawsuit, which had been paused since February, when both sides sought to facilitate a potential resolution and review the implications of a newly established SEC crypto task force.

The case, originally filed in June 2023, accused Binance and its founder, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, of operating as an unregistered securities exchange and broker-dealer, unlawfully serving U.S. customers, inflating trading volumes, mixing customer funds, and misleading investors about trading controls.

The SEC also alleged that Binance had allowed U.S. traders to access its offshore exchange, mishandled customers’ funds, and offered unregistered securities.

“Huge win for crypto today. The SEC’s case against us is dismissed,” Binance said on X. “Thank you to [SEC] Chairman [Paul] Atkins & the Trump team for pushing back against regulation by enforcement. U.S. innovation is back on track — and it’s just the beginning.”

Trader Loses $500K After Illiquid deUSD Market Triggers VWAP Spike

A crypto trader lost more than $500,000 after being liquidated on decentralized lending platform Euler on Avalanche due to a sudden spike in the price of deUSD, a synthetic dollar issued by the Elixir Network.

The incident involved a series of large trades on the deUSD/USDT Curve pool, which temporarily pushed the price of deUSD above its intended $1 peg — a spike that was sufficient to trigger a liquidation on Euler.

Chainlink’s price oracle, which provides a volume-weighted average price (VWAP) based on all available trading data, reflected the trades and broadcast the updated price to integrated applications. 

According to Chainlink advocate Zach Rynes — known in some circles as “Chainlink God” — the system worked as intended, but the market for deUSD is relatively illiquid, making it vulnerable to price manipulation or extreme volatility resulting from large trades.

In this case, he said a single large transaction had accounted for a significant portion of daily trading volume, causing the VWAP to spike and resulting in the liquidation.

Rynes was responding to Chaos Labs founder Omer Goldberg, who said the incident “just proved that oracles are one of the weakest links in DeFi.”

Cantor Fitzgerald Launches Gold-Hedged Bitcoin Fund

Wall Street investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald Asset Management on Thursday announced the launch of its first Bitcoin-focused investment vehicle.

The Cantor Fitzgerald Gold Protected Bitcoin Fund is structured with a five-year duration and is designed to offer investors uncapped upside exposure to Bitcoin price appreciation while providing one-to-one downside protection based on the price of gold.

By mixing the growth potential of Bitcoin with the relative stability of gold, Cantor Fitzgerald hopes to broaden access to crypto investment and integrate digital assets further into traditional financial markets.

“There are still people on the Earth that are still scared of bitcoin, and we want to bring them into this ecosystem,” Cantor Fitzgerald Chair Howard Lutnick told attendees at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas on Thursday.

Midas Launches DeFi Composable Tokenized Treasury Product

Real-world asset tokenization platform Midas has launched a tokenized U.S. Treasury bill product on the Algorand blockchain.

The first atomic swap using the product, named mTBILL, on Algorand took place on Tuesday, with $2 million in USDC exchanged for mTBILL tokens. The transaction was executed almost instantly, with negligible fees — 0.002 ALGO, or about $0.0004 — and completed in just two seconds.

The tokenized certificate’s underlying assets are short-term U.S. Treasury exchange-traded funds — specifically BlackRock’s IB01 and BUIDL. But unlike BlackRock’s own BUIDL fund, which requires a minimum investment of $5 million, Midas’s mTBILL is structured with no minimum investment requirement, making it far more accessible to smaller investors.

The product offers a net yield of 4.06%, based on the trailing seven-day yield of the underlying ETFs, net of fees. It also offers full DeFi composability, meaning that the tokens can be freely traded and utilized within DeFi applications on Algorand.

“These assets will make their way to our DeFi ecosystem in the next few weeks, stay tuned,” the Algorand Foundation said on X.

  • ✅ The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance on Thursday issued a staff statement clarifying that crypto staking and related services such as custody, pooled staking, and slashing insurance do not constitute securities offerings, aligning their treatment with mining and easing legal concerns for U.S. firms.

  • 🚢 OpenSea confirmed that its SEA token won’t launch until key feature updates are live as OS2 exits beta with 19-chain support, cross-chain swaps, and a new “Voyages” engagement rewards program.

  • 📣 SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce told attendees at the Bitcoin 2025 conference on Thursday that crypto users must accept responsibility for losses instead of seeking bailouts, while reiterating her support for lighter-touch regulation and companies’ freedom to hold tokens.

  •  🇨🇫 The Central African Republic will tokenize 1,700 hectares (4,200 acres) of land starting in June using its Solana-based $CAR token, potentially for mining activity, an announcement that sparked a 21% one-day jump in the token’s price, which has gained 127% during the past week.

  • ⚽ Football club Paris Saint-Germain revealed that it has been holding bitcoin in its treasury since last year, becoming the largest sports club to do so and signaling plans to invest in bitcoin ventures as part of its strategy to appeal to its young global fanbase.

  • ⚡ Square, the payment platform owned by Jack Dorsey's company Block, said this week that it is earning 9.7% annual yield on its bitcoin reserves by running a Lightning node through its service provider, c=, with one-quarter of outbound BTC payments now routed via Lightning and a full rollout to Square sellers planned for next year.

  • 👮‍♂️ Russian authorities have arrested a 26-year-old suspect accused of orchestrating a $3.2 million mining scam that involved selling off ASIC equipment meant for a fake “mining hotel,” defrauding more than 100 victims across the country’s far eastern Irkutsk region.

  • 🎮 Crypto massively multiplayer online role-playing game MapleStory N banned more than 6,500 accounts in 24 hours for using bots and cheat tools just two weeks after its launch as it ramps up automated detection and manual reviews to protect its Avalanche-based game economy.

  • 💵 Twenty One Capital secured another $100 million via convertible notes, bringing total fundraising to $685 million, as it prepares to go public through a special purpose acquisition company merger with Cantor Equity Partners, backed by Tether and iFinex, and led by Strike CEO Jack Mallers.

  • 🤖 Artificial intelligence startup Donut raised $7 million in pre-seed funding led by Hongshan, BITKRAFT, and HackVC to develop a Solana-based crypto browser that uses AI agents to autonomously execute onchain trades and transactions in real time.

  • 🔗 Canada-based Matador Technologies plans to invest up to $3.2 million in Indian firm HODL Systems for a 24.95% stake while licensing its digital gold and ordinals tech to target India’s massive mobile-first gold investment market.