Trump Media Pooh-Poohs Report by Real Media

Plus, 🐑 Alpaca put out to pasture, 🔓 A quantum threat to BTC? 🧠 ZK token airdrop incoming, and more!

Author

Juan Aranovich
May 27, 2025

Hi! In today’s edition:

  • 🧢 Trump Media calls fake news 

  • 💀 Alpaca shuts up shop

  • ⚛️ Google flags growing Bitcoin risk

  • 🎯 ZK token airdrop gamifies identity

By Tikta

Trump Media Disputes FT Report It Is Raising $3B for Crypto Buys

Trump Media & Technology Group, the Trump family-controlled company behind Truth Social, has rubbished a report by the Financial Times that the firm is planning to raise $3 billion through a combination of equity and convertible bonds to purchase crypto assets such as Bitcoin.

“Apparently the Financial Times has dumb writers listening to even dumber sources,” Trump Media & Technology said in response to the report.

The FT report aligns with Trump Media & Technology’s previously announced ambitions to expand into digital assets, including plans to launch a financial services platform focused on crypto and exchange-traded funds, and form a partnership with Crypto.com.

Those plans included investing up to $250 million in digital assets through the firm’s Truth.Fi platform.

Last week, House Democrats, led by Rep. Maxine Waters, introduced the Stop TRUMP in Crypto Act of 2025 to prohibit the president, vice president, members of Congress, and their immediate families from owning, trading or issuing digital assets while in office.

Alpaca Finance to Scrap All Products After Binance Delisting

Alpaca Finance, a decentralized finance protocol that operates mainly on the BNB Chain, plans to wind down all of its products and operations in the coming weeks following the delisting of its native ALPACA token by Binance in April.

The decision was made after what the Alpaca team described as "extensive internal deliberation and a thorough evaluation of possible paths forward," ultimately concluding that sunsetting the protocol was the most responsible way to safeguard its community.

The team also cited Binance’s delisting of ALPACA as a “major blow” that severely limited token accessibility and the project's ability to pursue new initiatives.

The opening of new positions on the protocol will be disabled in early June, and all remaining active positions will be automatically closed by June 30.

At its peak, Alpaca had more than $900 million in total value locked. It now has a much lower $54 million of TVL after years of declining activity.

ALPACA saw a sharp 43% nosedive within an hour of the team’s announcement, but the token has since recovered to a lesser 29% slump to trade at around $0.11 as of 2:00 a.m. ET.

Cracking Bitcoin Encryption Is Getting Much Easier, Google Says

Researchers at Google have found that it may be 20 times easier than previously thought for quantum computers to break encryption methods used by Bitcoin. 

Google's quantum team reported that breaking RSA encryption, which is used in many secure systems, including some Bitcoin wallets, could require 20 times fewer qubits than earlier estimates had indicated.

Although Bitcoin relies mainly on different cryptographic methods — such as SHA-256 and ECDSA — the core concern is similar: quantum computers could, in theory, reverse-engineer private keys from public addresses, threatening the security of funds.

RSA is not part of the Bitcoin protocol, but can be used in some peripheral and user-specific scenarios, including securing backups of private keys or as part of standard internet security protocols for Bitcoin wallets or services communicating over the internet.

Despite the reduction in required qubits, such powerful quantum computers do not currently exist. Most experts still estimate that practical quantum attacks are at least 10 to 20 years away.

Nevertheless, some TradFi firms are concerned. BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, recently flagged quantum computing as a real, long-term risk to Bitcoin in its ETF filings.

ZK-Focused Lagrange Labs to Launch New Token

Lagrange Labs, a cryptography startup focused on decentralized zero-knowledge proof generation, is launching a new utility token following the creation of the independent Lagrange Foundation. 

The LA token will be central to the Lagrange Prover Network, powering proof generation, staking, and subsidizing network activities for use cases such as verifiable artificial intelligence and zero-knowledge rollups.

One of the main eligibility requirements for the airdrop is participation in “Turing Roulette,” a game in which users guess whether they have interacted with an AI or a human.

Registrants must complete proof-of-uniqueness and proof-of-humanity checks during the process, with dates to sign up between May 28 and June 2.

The team plans to airdrop 10% of the total 1 billion LA supply in the initial airdrop, with 11.3% allocated to the foundation and 18.5% to investors. 

Lagrange Labs has raised more than $17 million in funding, including a $13.2 million seed round led by Founders Fund.

Tokens for early contributors and investors will be locked for one year following the token generation event, with gradual unlocks over a two-year period.

  • 👨‍⚖️ Sam Bankman-Fried’s 25-year sentence for his $11 billion FTX fraud may be shortened by more than four years, factoring in good behavior, time served, and prison program participation, with the convicted fraudster’s release now expected in December 2044.

  • 🎨 Four months after being pardoned by U.S. President Donald Trump, Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road drugs and guns online marketplace is auctioning prison memorabilia and artwork on marketplace Scarce City as he prepares to re-enter public life with a speech at Bitcoin 2025.

  • 🛡️ As kidnappings targeting crypto figures surge across France, EthCC organizers are enlisting police reinforcements and Cannes’ 500+ CCTV network to provide film festival-level protection for Ethereum leaders such as Vitalik Buterin at the June conference.

  • 📉 A Coinbase shareholder last week sued the exchange for allegedly misleading investors by delaying disclosure of a data breach last December and past regulatory issues, which allegedly caused sharp stock losses after news broke on May 15.

  • ⛏️ Bitlayer’s smart contract system, BitVM, gained the backing of mining pools controlling 31.5% of Bitcoin’s hashrate, including Antpool, F2Pool, and SpiderPool, enabling limited deployment of Taproot-based programmable transactions.

  • 📱 Solana co-founder Raj Gokal’s private documents and ID photos were leaked via a hacked Migos Instagram account in what appeared to be a blackmail attempt demanding 40 BTC, with posts deleted after more than an hour online.

  • 🏙️ Dubai launched a blockchain-based real estate platform with Prypco and Ctrl Alt, letting United Aram Emirates residents buy $540 property fractions recorded on the XRP Ledger as part of a $16 billion tokenization push through 2033.

  • 🟠 Strategy spent $427 million to acquire 4,020 BTC at $106,237 each, boosting its total stash to 580,250 BTC — nearly 3% of the total supply — after raising funds from $427 million in MSTR, STRK, and STRF stock sales.