UK Prepares to Sell $7B in Bitcoin — Will It Backfire?

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🇬🇧 UK plans $7B bitcoin liquidation

• 📊 ENA jumps as USDe supply hits $6B

• 💼 Bullish files to IPO on NYSE

• 🔓 CoinDCX loses $44M in server breach

• 🪙 Stablecoin law: winners & losers

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Udi Wertheimer’s recent bitcoin thesis boldly proclaims that “bitcoin is now in the final stages of a generational rotation” and projects an end-of-year BTC price of $400K. 

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U.K. Government Gears Up to Sell $7B Bitcoin: Report

The UK government is preparing to sell up to $7 billion worth of seized bitcoin, primarily to help address a significant budget deficit, according to a Saturday report from The Telegraph. 

This stash is largely composed of 61,000 BTC confiscated in a 2018 raid linked to a Chinese Ponzi scheme. Bitcoin’s current price point means these coins have appreciated more than 20-fold since then, now valued at over $6 billion.

The sale is reportedly being coordinated by the U.K. Home Office and police, with close oversight from the Treasury and Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Some industry watchers urged caution to avoid a poorly-timed sell-off that could negatively impact the market or short-change the Treasury.

“Gordon Brown's ‘Brown's Bottom’ saw the UK dump its gold at rock-bottom prices from '99 to '02. It's the blunder which may repeat itself if UK's sells its Bitcoin stash.,” said Blokland Smart Multi-Asset Fund founder Jeroen Blokland on X. 

ENA Gains 40% in a Week as USDe Supply Hits Record US$6B

The supply of USDe, the “synthetic dollar” issued by Ethena Labs, has reached an all-time high, surpassing 6 billion tokens in circulation, according to Etherscan.

The supply surge reflects a growth of $697 million in new tokens created in the last week, the second largest weekly creation on record.

The recent rise of USDe also positions it as the third largest stablecoin by market cap, ahead of Sky’s USDS. 

Some market participants attribute the growth in USDe to growing momentum in the Ethena ecosystem. The protocol’s native token ENA has surged 43% in the last week and 86% in the last month. 

“Aside from positive market tailwinds with crypto asset prices rising across the board, ENA's rally stands out for one key reason: Speculation on Fee-Switch Activation,” explained Kairos Research. 

The fee switch activation refers to the process by which Ethena begins distributing a portion of its protocol revenue to ENA token stakers. One of the key conditions for this activation was USDe reaching $6 billion in circulation.

“In addition to the business model that captures native yield, Ethena has plans to launch an Ethereum L2 via Arbitrum (Converge Chain) that will host a native perp DEX (Ethereal) and other financial apps,” said The DeFi report in its latest Ethena Memo.

“This could ultimately introduce fee-based revenue streams from trading & bridging that ultimately benefit ENA holders.”

Crypto Exchange Bullish Files for NYSE IPO

Peter Thiel-backed crypto exchange Bullish has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) aimed at raising up to $100 million and plans to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker "BLSH.”

The firm, which operates both the Bullish digital exchange and the news platform CoinDesk, reported a net loss of $348.6 million for Q1 2025 in its S-1 filing. It marks a significant downturn from its $104.8 million profit the previous year.

Still, the filing comes amid renewed investor interest in the crypto sector. The offering will be underwritten by Wall Street giants J.P. Morgan, Jefferies, Citigroup, Cantor Fitzgerald, Deutsche Bank, and Societe Generale.

Bullish said its total trading volume has exceeded $1.25 trillion since launch.

Hackers Drain $44 Million From CoinDCX

CoinDCX, one of India's largest crypto exchanges, was hacked on Saturday, with around $44 million drained from one of its internal operational accounts.

Security firm Cyvers and onchain sleuth ZachXBT found that the attacker’s wallet was initially funded with 1 ETH via crypto mixer Tornado Cash. A portion of the stolen funds were then bridged from Solana to Ethereum to obscure their trail.

The exchange’s CEO Sumit Gupta, and co-founder Neeraj Khandelwal, said that no customer funds were affected and user assets remain fully secure in cold wallets.

The breach was triggered by what the company describes as a “sophisticated server breach”, allowing the attacker to compromise an internal account used solely for liquidity provisioning with a partner exchange.

“Since our operational accounts are segregated from customer wallets, the exposure is only limited to this specific account and is being fully absorbed by us - from our own treasury reserves,” said Gupta on X. 

“We are collaborating with the exchange partner to block and recover assets, including coming out with a bug bounty program soon,” he added. 

GENIUS Act Passes: Who Are the Winners, Losers, and What Comes Next?

With President Trump now having signed the GENIUS Act — formally the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (S.1582) — early winners and losers of America’s new stablecoin regime are coming into focus, but they are not always obvious.

This may seem counterintuitive because legislation itself sets standardized requirements on who can issue and distribute dollar-backed stablecoins in the U.S., and it includes multiple safeguards governing reserve standards, redemption rights, audits, and federal oversight. But at the same time, these onerous requirements will affect the diverse set of participants in the $260.6 billion industry differently. Early movers may not necessarily have an advantage, and the bill does not mean that big banks like JPMorgan are now destined to dominate the industry.

Much remains to be determined.

So who stands to benefit the most, and which players may be pushed out of the game entirely?

• 🔁 Aave is preparing to launch a rebranded, centralized version of its lending protocol on Kraken’s Ink blockchain, with incentives aiming to attract $250 million in user deposits despite Ink’s weak performance so far.

• 📱 Zora’s token soared over 60% after Coinbase’s Base App began using its content-minting tech, letting users turn social posts into tradable tokens and doubling daily mint activity.

• 🧱 Ethereum’s gas limit rose above 39 million as nearly half the network’s validators backed larger blocks, with Vitalik Buterin calling the upgrade safe thanks to major storage optimizations in node software.

• 💼 Blank-check firm Dynamix will merge with another entity to form Ether Machine, a holding company that plans to accumulate over $1.5 billion worth of ether as part of a broader crypto treasury strategy.

• 🔐 Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm will be allowed to discuss the general importance of privacy at trial, though the judge barred him from referencing a constitutional “right to privacy” or certain emotionally charged cases.

• 🗳️ World Liberty Financial’s $WLFI token is set to become tradable within two months after a near-unanimous governance vote, with pre-market activity pushing its fully diluted valuation to $16 billion, ranking it 11th by market cap.

• 🏦 JPMorgan analysts say regulators abroad, including the UK’s central bank, seem to prefer tokenized versions of regular bank deposits over stablecoins because they hold steady value and follow existing banking rules.

• 🔥 Phantom’s new perpetuals product, built on Hyperliquid, surpassed $1 billion in trading volume.

• 🪜 Ether.fi is teaming up with HyperBeat to launch a new staking token, beHYPE, starting with an early-access vault and eventually moving to automated smart contracts within six weeks.

• 🤝📱 dYdX made its first acquisition by buying social trading startup Pocket Protector, bringing in a small team and two founders to help build more community-driven trading features.

• 🧠 TAO Synergies bought nearly $10 million in Bittensor tokens to stake them in support of decentralized AI, becoming the largest public holder and driving a 7.5% spike in its stock price.

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1. WSJ: Why Banks Are on High Alert About Stablecoins

2. Cointelegraph: Why FTX ruling on China payouts matters: Global precedent at stake

3. DL News: Top NFT collections roar back to life as Ethereum and Solana prices pump