BNB Chain-based decentralized perpetuals exchange Aster briefly crossed $2 billion in total value locked (TVL) on Thursday after launching its native token, before falling back sharply, according to DefiLlama data. The surge that followed the project’s Aster (APX) token launch proved to be short-lived, as it ended the day at $545 million TVL. At the time of…

As the European Union rolls out its landmark Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework, the law’s key promise of a unified market is already under pressure. In the latest episode of Byte-Sized Insight, Cointelegraph explored whether MiCA can live up to its promise. Promises vs reality The regulation was designed to simplify operations for crypto firms by introducing a…

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has appointed new members to its Global Markets Advisory Committee (GMAC) and subcommittees, adding several crypto industry leaders to the Digital Asset Markets Subcommittee (DAMS) — a move that underscores the regulator’s continued engagement with the sector. CFTC Acting Chair Caroline D. Pham named four new DAMS members: Katherine Minarik, chief…

Payments giant PayPal is expanding its PayPal USD stablecoin across eight new blockchains, seven of which are through an integration with LayerZero’s Stargate Hydra bridge. The integration will create a permissionless version of PayPal USD — PYUSD0 — which will be “fully fungible” with the PYUSD and interoperable across blockchains, crypto infrastructure firm LayerZero said in…

Mantra has upgraded its mainnet to natively run both the Ethereum Virtual Machine and CosmWasm, bringing a MultiVM architecture to an RWA-focused layer 1 so developers can use familiar tooling on a chain tuned for tokenization. Tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) presents an addressable market that analysts estimate at about $16 trillion. But progress has been slowed…

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has introduced licensing exemptions for intermediaries involved in the distribution of stablecoins issued by licensed entities. Under the newly published ASIC Corporations (Stablecoin Distribution Exemption) Instrument 2025/631, intermediaries distributing a stablecoin issued by an Australian financial services (AFS) licensee are no longer required to hold their own AFS, market or…