27 May 2025, 09:36

Blockchain.com expands in Africa as local crypto rules take shape

Blockchain.com is stepping up its presence in Africa, targeting markets where governments are beginning to implement formal crypto regulations. The United Kingdom-based exchange plans to open a physical office in Nigeria during the second quarter of 2025 — its “fastest-growing market” in West Africa — amid broader expansion efforts in Ghana, Kenya and South Africa, according to a May 27 report by Bloomberg. “Nigeria has taken meaningful steps toward creating a clear framework for crypto,” Owenize Odia, Blockchain.com’s general manager for Africa, reportedly said. The move comes as global sentiment shifts, including political tailwinds from the United States, where President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto stance has encouraged industry expansion. Related: Hedera Africa Hackathon launches with $1M prize pool and Web3 focus Nigeria and Ghana lead in crypto regulation While cryptocurrency trading remains restricted in many African countries, some, including Nigeria and Ghana, are taking steps toward creating legal frameworks for exchanges. Odia said the company is prioritizing a license application in Nigeria, which recently enacted a new securities law covering digital assets. Ghana’s central bank released draft guidelines indicating plans to begin regulating crypto platforms by September 2025, while Kenya is still in the research phase. Crypto exchange blockchain.com. Source: Blockchain.com Odia added that such signals of regulatory intent are key to Blockchain.com’s expansion decisions across the continent. The exchange sees the region’s youthful population and currency instability as factors fueling crypto adoption. Cointelegraph reached out to Blockchain.com for comment but did not receive a response by publication. Blockchain.com claims 37 million verified users, 92 million wallets and over $1 trillion in transaction volume, according to its website. In 2022, Blockchain.com closed a funding round that saw its valuation spike from $5.2 billion to $14 billion less than two months before the collapse of Do Kwon’s Terra ecosystem . However, a $110 million Series E financing round in 2023 more than halved its 2022 valuation Related: Ethiopia in the global Bitcoin mining spotlight: AMA with UMINERS South Africa leads in crypto race South Africa is emerging as a frontrunner in Africa’s crypto race, with the country positioning itself as a regional hub for digital assets. According to Ben Caselin, chief marketing officer at Johannesburg-based crypto exchange VALR, South Africa’s strong legal infrastructure and business-friendly environment make it an ideal launchpad for crypto companies looking to expand across the continent. In a September 2024 interview with Cointelegraph, Caselin emphasized that regulatory clarity is a major factor drawing both local and international players to South Africa. Momentum continues to build, with the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) approving 59 crypto platform licenses by March 2024, as over 260 applications remain under review. Magazine: TradFi is building Ethereum L2s to tokenize trillions in RWAs: Inside story

27 May 2025, 09:20

Hackers access HipHop group Migos’ Instagram exposing Solana co-founder personal ID

Hackers compromised the Instagram account of the hip-hop group Migos to leak Solana co-founder Raj Gokal’s passport, ID, address, phone number, wife’s details, and family pictures. The material is suspected to be KYC images, which raised questions about whether the source may be linked to a recent Coinbase data breach. The caption accompanying the doxxed information read, “You should’ve paid the 40 BTC,” suggesting an extortion attempt. The bio was also changed to “CHECK BIO FOR MEMECOIN” after the hack. Gokal’s accounts were reportedly socially engineered, and the attackers posted the materials via the hijacked Migos IG account after he refused to pay. Solana’s Gokal says hackers have been attempting to control his social media accounts TLDR >Raj got social engineered for access to an email account a few days ago >Attacker attempted to extort him with PII obtained from the account after but he didn’t pay >Same attacker compromised Migos Instagram account today >Attacker posted Raj’s PII from the Migos account — ZachXBT (@zachxbt) May 27, 2025 Last week, Solana’s Raj tweeted that attackers tried to gain control of his email and social media accounts. On May 27, hackers hijacked the Migos Instagram account, which has over 13 million followers, and leaked personal information about Solana co-founder and his wife in a blackmail attempt. The attackers demanded a ransom of 40 BTC (~$4.4 million) through posts that remained live for roughly 90 minutes, gaining thousands of interactions before being deleted. Experts like online sleuth ZachXBT believe phishing and social engineering were used in the breach and highlighted persistent security flaws on Instagram, mainly affecting inactive celebrity accounts. Meta is under fire for its slow response, prompting renewed calls for stronger security measures and quicker user support in hacking incidents. The Roll Up’s co-founders and host, Andy, claimed that the Migos had not posted anything since February 15th, 2024, adding that the incident was very unfortunate for Gokal and made IG policies against doxxing look weak so far. “Attackers have been trying to take control of my email, social media, Google, Apple, etc. this past week. If you see anything suspect (token launch, soliciting funds, etc) that means they got through. Be careful out there.” – Raj Gokal , Co-founder of Solana According to Andy, Instagram deleted the posts to cover up Gokal’s personal information as best as possible. Still, he added that there appeared to be a guy, “Arvind,” who also had their SOL balance leaked through the same Migos IG. Also, a link was posted to a Telegram group that appeared to be selling unreleased music. Coinbase discloses a months-long breach of data affecting 69.46K customers Coinbase disclosed last week that a months-long data breach resulted in the theft of personal and financial information from at least 69,461 customers, less than 1% of Coinbase’s monthly transacting users. The US-based crypto company’s filing said the breach dated back to December 26, 2024, and continued until earlier this month. Coinbase also faces an action lawsuit after its stock prices dipped because of the disclosure of data breaches. Plaintiffs claimed that Coinbase failed to disclose the breach on time, leading to a stock price dip. The breach occurred when cybercriminals used social engineering to bribe overseas customer support agents into stealing sensitive data from Coinbase systems. The company received an anonymous email from the hackers on May 11, which included a ransom demand for $20 million in exchange for not releasing the stolen information. Coinbase’s chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, responded to the incident by stating that the company had notified the DOJ and was working with other U.S. and international law enforcement agencies to pursue criminal charges against these bad actors. The U.S. Justice Department has since opened an investigation into the security breach. Coinbase clarified that some personal information was compromised, including names, contact details, masked Social Security numbers, and bank account information. However, no customer funds, passwords, private keys, or wallet access were affected. Additionally, the attackers did not gain access to hot or cold wallets. Coinbase Prime users were also not compromised. Cryptopolitan Academy: Want to grow your money in 2025? Learn how to do it with DeFi in our upcoming webclass. Save Your Spot

27 May 2025, 09:18

Bitcoin (BTC) Consolidates: Is $106,000 about to become strong horizontal support?

Bitcoin (BTC) is back above the $109,300 previous all-time high, which it surpassed on its way to the new all-time high of $112,000. After going back down as far as $106,600 over the last few days, Bitcoin is now consolidating above this level. Is this about to become good horizontal support and a springboard into the next stage of this bull market? Bond market under severe duress Cracks are opening in the global monetary system. Bond markets across the world are in disarray. In the US, buyers just cannot be found for longer duration bonds, and this is revealed in constantly rising 10, 20, and 30 year yields that just can’t seem to be kept down no matter what the US treasury does about it. The 10 year yield has dropped over the last few days from over 4.6% to 4.45%, but a higher high was put in, and this could be followed by a higher low, meaning that the trend could continue to go up. It might be argued that trust is the main element that is lacking in government bonds in these incredibly uncertain times, as more people begin to realise that governments are being forced to debase their currencies, thereby stealing the purchasing power of citizens, in order to be able to roll over the debt and keep the system going - albeit on life support. Bitcoin becoming more attractive It’s in this world that the Bitcoin life raft is floating. It has just surpassed both Amazon and Google to become the 5th biggest asset by market capitalization , at around $2.17 trillion. That said, there are still many across social and mainstream media platforms that would have us think that Bitcoin has made a market cycle top and that it’s generally downhill from here. With the greatest respect to many of these detractors who undoubtedly do have sound economic credentials, why would investors sell their Bitcoin now into fiat currency? Fiat is the problem - not Bitcoin. Fiat can be magicked into existence in the blink of an eye - Bitcoin cannot. This gives Bitcoin an attraction that puts it in the same category as gold, although more gold can be dug out of the ground to boost its supply. $BTC short-term chart Source: TradingView The short-term chart for $BTC shows that the $106,000 horizontal support (orange line) has been well respected. The previous all-time high resistance (blue line) is now in the process of being flipped into support. If the bulls are successful in doing this it would likely only be a matter of time before a new all-time high is made, and a more sustained surge takes the price to higher levels. The importance of the $106,000 horizontal support Source: TradingView The daily chart shows just how important the $106,000 horizontal level has become. It rests on some of the daily candle tops of the big bull flag, and this support is also noticeable in recent price action. It may be that the bulls aren’t ready to make their move higher yet, and there could be some more sideways price action that tests this strong support base. Having said that, if the current resistance does become support, we would perhaps be more likely to see upwards price action from here. Of course, there is also the possibility of a negative or positive catalyst that spurs the price in one direction or the other. Bitcoin is the life raft out of the system Nevertheless, asset prices are imaginably going to rise from here, benefitting from the amount of money printing or other methods that introduce more liquidity into the system. Ready to climb higher into the final stage of a cycle that could be about to increase in duration, Bitcoin is the soundest money out there. If central banks are buying gold, it means that trust in the monetary system is dwindling. Buying Bitcoin is your life raft out of this system. Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

27 May 2025, 09:12

Metaplanet: A Possible Meme-Powered Bitcoin Bet

Summary Metaplanet writes put options to buy Bitcoin, in addition to raising considerable cash from equity and debt sources - Japanese debt is cheap. The stock has surged due to short squeezes and meme-stock dynamics in the latest days as the company continues to "aggressively" accumulate Bitcoin and adopt a meme-stock character. Ultimately, it's a public listing that could be enhanced by short squeezes as it's heavily shorted, but Bitcoin underlies it, and it is already extremely volatile. Discussing a Bitcoin (BTC-USD) levered play like Tokyo-based Metaplanet Inc. ( MTPLF ) is not in the norm for us, but it has been hit by some interesting dynamics a little bit unique to a Japanese issue. There has been a short squeeze as the company adopts some meme-stock trading characteristics, and its exceptional short selling ratios has meant a squeeze has been in with a major scarcity of stocks available across the illiquid US listing and the Japanese listing that further rocketed the shares. It gained almost 200% since late April, moving up by a multiple of BTC's rise in that period, prior to that mostly trading in line with BTC. The company pivoted into this Bitcoin strategy recently, and we will say right away we have no interest in the company. They are raising major funds to speculate on Bitcoin, and their income generating strategies will to a significant degree be driven by selling put options. They may be hedging, but we couldn't find any disclosure to that effect. They did say they were cash collateralised in their option writing strategy at least. Of course, they hold massive amounts of Bitcoin, an asset whose long-term viability we seriously question, and their operating business also depends on Bitcoin going up it would seem, something we aren't going to bet on. Breakdown As far as we understood, the company is employing an all in strategy on Bitcoin. Initially, the business was focused on a hotel location in central Tokyo and also something in Hiroshima, doing hospitality, but then one day they decided that on the conviction that Bitcoin is somehow going to be the future, they would raise considerable amounts of cash, around 40 billion JPY it would seem in equity based on the balance sheet , and also some debt it would seem though they've repaid some of it, cumulatively raising around 80 billion JPY, with a plan of putting it into Bitcoin. Additionally, they have a " treasury management " business which is basically dominated by selling put options that are "cash collateralised" also on Bitcoin. They hold around 51 billion JPY in Bitcoin as of the quarterly figures, around 90% of the company's total assets. Though now it would seem that have over 100 billion JPY in Bitcoin . They seem to have gotten into this already from the beginning of 2024 when they started to purchase Bitcoin. Segment Results (Q1 Earnings) The majority of their earnings at this point at the operating level, before accounting for the impact of gains on Bitcoin, are now from the Bitcoin income generation strategy. The ordinary income contains the gains they are making on Bitcoin, which they are accumulating "aggressively" and as a long-term investment. In other words, Metaplanet is a Bitcoin bet, a bit like MicroStrategy ( MSTR ). Metaplanet is one of the largest public holders of Bitcoin in the world. Comments There are some advantages to Metaplanet: There are some tax advantages in investing in Metaplanet as opposed to directly in Bitcoin, but this only seems to apply to Japanese tax residents. The fact that they can raise capital, particularly from debtors but also from shareholders despite the NAV premium, is very good for prior shareholders. Debt capital is also very cheap in Japan. Despite Metaplanet's employment of leverage, investors in Metaplanet are limited in liability by virtue of it being a public limited company, provided investors aren't using leverage to invest in the stock. It is highly shorted , meaning short squeezes are possible with stock to cover shorts possibly becoming suddenly very scarce, and this could become a new majorly followed meme stock. With the TSE circuit breakers kicking in frequently with it is also causes covering to be harassed. It is the most shorted stock in Japan as of a few days ago. But then there are clearly some major questions: There is no track record, yet the company is filling their presentations with data about how they're the best performing stock in the Japanese market, dominated mainly by industrial auto names and other slow movers (not as big of an accomplishment). Similarly, we don't really have much information on their income generating strategy other than that they are writing put options, which of course could one day go very badly for them. At least it's cash collateralised, which we'll take to mean they are not employing a lot of leverage. We entirely question the viability of Bitcoin. Other than the obvious, which is that it's very volatile (not a good store of value), mining is very energy and relatively time intensive, and it's not a practical currency especially compared to more reasonably managed fiat currencies, we also doubt the validity of the decentralisation principle which is at the centre of Bitcoin. In short, pool mining is the only logical way to go about finding nonces in a proof of work system. This means that coordinated miners are essentially causing centralisation , and pool mining has to be administrated by some entity. These could be compromised or may already be compromised. It's a vulnerability, and the more threatening Bitcoin becomes as an alternative to fiat, the more likely this vulnerability will be exploited if possible - though this risk is remote. It trades above NAV consistently. Currently, it is trading at multiples of its approximate NAV (around 100 billion JPY in Bitcoin, but market CAP is around 580 bn) Bottom Line As far as Metaplanet is concerned, while it may be interesting as an enhanced Bitcoin play in the event of a short squeeze, also because if it becomes used as a speculative tool to trade Bitcoin on the public markets at key moments shares will become especially scarce and buyers can also worsen squeezes by competing for shares looking to be used for cover, it is ultimately a newfangled Bitcoin play. You have to want to own Bitcoin to be interested in Metaplanet. If it becomes a meme stock, it may rocket, but it will also become incredibly volatile. We're not touching it.

27 May 2025, 09:04

Blockchain.com eyes African expansion amid crypto rule changes

Blockchain.com appears to be betting on Africa’s crypto future, where regulations could transform a once-restrictive market. Crypto wallet and exchange platform Blockchain.com is reportedly looking to grow in Africa as some countries begin introducing regulations for digital assets, Bloomberg reports . According to Owenize Odia, Blockchain.com’s general manager for Africa operations, the company is focusing on Nigeria , Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa, with plans to open a physical office in Nigeria in Q2. Nigeria is Blockchain.com’s “fastest-growing market” in West Africa, Odia said, adding that the country “has taken meaningful steps toward creating a clear framework for crypto.” While most African nations still ban or tightly control crypto trading, a few are slowly changing their approach. Nigeria recently passed a new investment law that allows licensing for crypto exchanges. You might also like: Ripple teams up with Chipper Cash to expand cross-border payments in Africa Ghana may also introduce rules soon as Odia noted that Ghana’s central bank has draft guidelines showing “its intention to begin regulating cryptocurrency and related platforms by the end of September 2025.” Meanwhile, Kenya is still studying how to oversee crypto before making decisions. Africa is quickly becoming a hotspot for crypto adoption, and South Africa appears to be leading the charge. A new report by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority highlights growing opportunities in South Africa’s decentralized finance sector. While still small globally, South Africa’s DeFi market is expanding quickly, with total value locked exceeding $27 million and projections reaching $180 million by 2028. Payments remain the most common use case (over 50%), followed by lending/borrowing (47.6%) and decentralized exchanges (33%). Read more: Amidst speculations of the possible Tether exile from the US, the company’s CEO hints at a high-scale project in Africa

27 May 2025, 09:00

Bitcoin (BTC) To Continue Price Discovery Rally If It Holds These Levels – Analyst

As Bitcoin (BTC) attempts to turn the $110,000 resistance into support, some analysts believe its price discovery rally has just started, forecasting new highs for the flagship crypto. Related Reading: Avalanche Slides Off The Edge – What Comes After The 4H Trendline Snap? Bitcoin Starts Second Price Discovery Uptrend Last week, Bitcoin’s momentum propelled its price to its new all-time high (ATH) of $111,814 before retracing to its current range. Over the weekend, Bitcoin confirmed its breakout into its second Price Discovery Uptrend, following its successful retest of the $104,500 mark as support. The cryptocurrency has been in a significant market recovery for over a month, rallying nearly 50% from April lows. Analyst Rekt Capital noted that BTC ended its downside deviation period and positioned itself for a retest of its key re-accumulation range during early May’s surge, which was successfully reclaimed and surpassed. The analyst considers that its new Price Discovery Uptrend has “only just begun,” as Bitcoin starts Week 2 of this phase. Rekt Capital highlighted that this cycle has been “a story of Re-Accumulation Ranges,” which signals that a new range will likely form after this Price Discovery. Meanwhile, history suggests a second Price Discovery Correction is ahead as Bitcoin transitions into its new Price Discovery Uptrend. During its future correction, BTC will likely retrace between 25%-35% “to produce yet another Downside Deviation below the Re-Accumulation Range Low (future orange circle) before resuming upside into a likely Price Discovery Uptrend 3.” In the meantime, “All Bitcoin needs to do is hold above the Re-accumulation Range High of $104,500” to continue its price discovery rally. $110,000 Breakout Next? Notably, the flagship crypto has been retesting the range high as support over the past two weeks, confirming the breakout. As such, dipping into the previous $92,000-$104,500 range’s upper zone could happen as “part of normal volatility.” Moreover, it turned another key resistance, the $102,500 mark, into support during this period, which it had previously been rejected from in January 2025. With these levels as support, Rekt Capital considers that only the December 2024 and January 2025 upwicks, at $108,353 and $109,588, stand in the way of additional Price Discovery. Trader Daan Crypto Trades noted that Bitcoin is “still strong but fighting around its previous all-time high from earlier this year.” He pointed out that price action looks “very choppy” in the lower timeframes, but it shouldn’t be concerning for investors if the price remains within its current range. Related Reading: XRP ETF At 83% Approval Odds—Is The SEC Losing Grip? Analyst MacroCRG affirmed that Bitcoin must officially reclaim the $110,000 level to continue its rally, as it marks the previous ATH and the Value Area High (VAH) from last week. “Acceptance above and we likely squeeze straight into price discovery again,” CRG stated. Currently, Bitcoin is retesting its Weekly opening of $109,004 as support, which could set the stage for a breakout above the $110,000 mark if held. Meanwhile, rejection from this area could send BTC price to the $106,000-$108,000 area. As of this writing, Bitcoin trades at $109,181, a 1.4% increase in the daily timeframe. Featured Image from Unsplash.com, Chart from TradingView.com