Richard Heart, the controversial founder of HEX, is claiming total victory over the US SEC after years of court battles.

On April 21, the SEC said that it would not amend and refile its fraud case against the former child actor and crypto evangelist. A court had dismissed the SEC’s fraud charges against Heart on Feb. 28.

Heart announced on X that HEX had obtained a victory very few crypto projects could boast: “Richard Heart, PulseChain, PulseX, and HEX have defeated the SEC completely and have achieved regulatory clarity that nearly no other coins have.”

HEX may be out of hot water with American securities regulators (for now), but Heart still faces charges in Europe, where he is wanted both for alleged tax fraud and for alleged assault on a minor. 

Richard Heart, real name Richard James Schueler, is still on Interpol’s wanted list. Source: Interpol

SEC claimed Heart used HEX to defraud investors

In July 2023, the SEC filed a complaint against Heart, whose real name is Richard James Schueler, along with HEX, HEX’s layer-1 blockchain project, PulseChain, and the decentralized exchange (DEX) for the PulseChain network, PulseX. 

The SEC made a number of allegations, including securities fraud and securities registration violations. It asked the court to bar Heart and his projects from participating in any sort of crypto asset security offering and to give up “all ill-gotten gains received as a result of the violations alleged.”

The complaint noted Heart’s repeated claims that HEX could offer incredible rewards to make investors rich. It also wrote that Heart spent over $12 million of proceeds from HEX offerings on luxury goods such as watches, sports cars and a 555-carat diamond ring.

Indeed, Heart is no stranger to the finer things in life. His celebrity is in part due to his frequent displays of wealth. In one video on X, he flaunted Louis Vuitton cases filled with dozens of luxury watches that he said were worth 9 million euros. 

Richard Heart wears four Rolex watches. Source: Luxury Bazaar

Heart’s court case came down to jurisdiction. Last year, his legal team filed a motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that the SEC failed to show that any activities had occurred within the United States. 

The SEC protested the motion. Ultimately, US District Judge Carol Bagley Amon agreed with Heart (the HEX founder does not live in the US), and she ruled that the statements regarding HEX’s price were targeted to a global audience — not US investors.

“The alleged misappropriation occurred through digital wallets and crypto asset platforms, none of which were alleged to have any connection with the United States,” Amon stated.

Finnish authorities want Heart on tax and assault charges

Heart claims that this legal victory provides new ground on which the crypto industry can thrive, creating a legal precedent that supposedly makes HEX safer to work with than any other crypto project.

Heart and HEX may not face American securities regulators, but he is still in hot water with Finnish authorities over alleged tax evasion and assault.

In September 2024, Finnish media wrote that Heart, who was reportedly residing in Helsinki, was remanded into custody in absentia. Finnish investigators, at the request of the country’s tax authorities, were investigating Heart and reportedly found that Heart’s income reporting did not match the tax service’s estimates.

Helsinki police detective Harri Saaristol said, “Based on the very considerable amount of money in question and the long-term and planned nature of the activity, there are grounds to suspect gross tax evasion.”

Related: Interpol issues ‘Red Notice’ for Hex founder Richard Heart

In the course of their investigation, Finnish police seized millions of euros worth of luxury watches from a residence in the city of Espoo near Helsinki. 

Europol also stated that Heart (referred to as Schueler in the report) is wanted for assaulting a minor. “Schueler physically assaulted a 16-year-old victim by grabbing their hair, dragging them into the stairwell and knocking them to the ground.”

The allegations together have earned him a profile on Europol and Interpol’s most wanted criminal lists. Investigations are ongoing. 

How long can HEX keep it up?

It seems Heart dodged US regulation because the SEC lacked jurisdiction rather than evidence. So, how long can he keep HEX going?

Industry observers and analysts have long claimed that HEX was a new form of Ponzi scheme, namely due to the promises of a whopping 38% annual percentage yield, larger profits for onboarding new users and the fact that Heart owned some 90% of HEX tokens.

Despite a number of committed acolytes on social media, the token seems all but dead. HEX’s price pumped briefly on news of the SEC dismissal. Zooming out, it’s barely moved since Heart’s legal troubles with the SEC began.

At publishing time, HEX’s price is $0.002253; 24-hour transaction volumes barely top $250,000. 

HEX’s price spiked in 2021 before nearly falling off by early 2023. Source: CoinMarketCap

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Payments behemoth PayPal plans to offer a 3.7% yield on balances held in its PayPal USD stablecoin.

According to an April 23 Bloomberg report, a PayPal representative said that the measure aims to encourage more usage of the firm’s stablecoin. The program is expected to launch this summer, and the rewards will also be paid out in PayPal USD (PYUSD).

Users will be able to exchange PYUSD for fiat currency, spend it or send it to other users. The rewards will accrue daily and will be paid on a monthly basis. The company hopes this feature will lead to a higher predominance of stablecoin and crypto payments on its platform.

The report follows PayPal USD reaching a $1 billion market cap in the summer of 2024. As of publication, the stablecoin’s market cap is nearly a quarter lower at $873.3 million.

PayPal USD’s market cap chart. Source: CoinMarketCap

Tzahi Kanza, CEO of crypto investment firm Syndika, told Cointelegraph that “from a regulatory standpoint, PayPal must ensure that offering interest doesn’t cause its stablecoin to be classified as a security. “When it comes to financial risks for the users, he said that PayPal can keep its promises, and the main risk is losing the peg to the dollar rather than interest-related issues. He said:

“Stablecoins that don’t offer yield are generally not considered securities. However, yield-bearing stablecoins may fall under that classification.”

Related: PayPal’s Xoom launches cross-border stablecoin settlement

PayPal is betting on crypto

PayPal is betting on blockchain technology with its continued product development. Reports from earlier in April show that PayPal has expanded its cryptocurrency offerings to include Chainlink (LINK) and Solana (SOL), giving US-based users the ability to buy, sell and transfer the popular tokens.

In fact, PayPal was cited by Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron as one of the catalysts for the stablecoin industry’s rapid growth in recent years. In an interview with Cointelegraph, Boiron said, “Companies like Stripe and PayPal integrating stablecoins is likely the primary catalyst for their growth.”

Related: PayPal, Ernst & Young settle first corporate payment via PYUSD stablecoin

The story of PayPal USD

PYUSD is a US dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Paxos Trust Company on behalf of PayPal in August 2023. At the time of the launch, PayPal became the first major payment network to launch its own stablecoin, with Venmo rolling out support in September 2023.

Each token is purportedly backed one-to-one by cash deposits, short-term US Treasury notes and similar cash-equivalent assets in accounts overseen by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Initially, PYUSD was a token compliant with the ERC-20 Ethereum standard, but has since also been deployed on Solana (SOL).

PayPal USD’s current market cap is still a far cry from the top stablecoin, Tether’s USDt (USDT). At the time of writing, CoinMarketCap data shows that USDT’s market cap stands at $145.3 billion, over 17,255% higher than PYUSD’s. Kanza said that “Tether’s strength lies in its market dominance — not in its regulatory compliance, transparency, or yield” since it does not offer those. He added:

“To compete effectively, targeting these three areas — compliance, transparency and returns — would be a smart strategy [for PayPal.]“

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Cryptocurrency staking protocol Symbiotic closed a $29 million Series A funding round led by Web3-focused investment firms, including Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures, to support the launch of a new economic coordination layer for blockchain security.

The round included more than 100 angel investors, with participation from major industry players including Aave, Polygon and StarkWare, the company said in an April 23 announcement shared with Cointelegraph.

The closing of the funding round also marks the launch of Symbiotic’s Universal Staking Framework, which aims to be an economic coordination layer that bolsters blockchain security via staking.

The new staking layer enables the use of any combination of cryptocurrencies to secure networks, including monolithic and modular layer-1 and layer-2 blockchains, the announcement stated.

“We’ve created a modular framework that lets protocols evolve security models over time while efficiently coordinating risk,” Misha Putiatin, co-founder of Symbiotic, told Cointelegraph. “This empowers protocols at every stage of their lifecycle to evolve their security models seamlessly without rebuilding infrastructure.”

Related: Ethereum L2 development is ‘double-edged sword’ for ETH value

The “next step” in blockchain infrastructure

The new staking layer is the “next step in blockchain infrastructure” due to unlocking “economic coordination between assets and networks that were previously impossible,” according to Paul Veradittakit, managing partner at Pantera Capital.

“As the number and variety of onchain assets continue to increase, Symbiotic allows them to easily serve as economic security while enabling entirely new use cases across DeFi,” he added.

Blockchain networks looking to bolster security can adopt Symbiotic’s network of decentralized validators that bring “programmable security” without the need to modify infrastructure.

According to the company, 14 networks, including Hyperlane, Spark and Avail, have already adopted the new coordination layer, with 20 more expected to follow.

The staking layer enables “any protocol, including L1s, bridges, oracles, and even emerging verticals like artificial intelligence or zero-knowledge systems, to configure their own validator sets, incentive mechanisms and slashing conditions without having to rebuild core infrastructure,” Putiatin said.

Related: Bitcoin ETFs log $912M inflows in ‘dramatic’ investor sentiment boost

Crypto needs more collaborative economic incentives: Hoskinson

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, speaking at Paris Blockchain Week 2025, emphasized the need for collaborative economics in the crypto industry to counter growing competition from traditional tech firms entering the blockchain space.

Charles Hoskinson. Source: Cointelegraph

Crypto’s “circular economy,” which often means that the rally of a specific cryptocurrency is bolstered by funds exiting another token, is limiting the growth of the industry, said Hoskinson.

“The problem right now, with the way we’ve done things in the cryptocurrency space, is the tokenomics and the market structure are intrinsically adversarial. It’s sum 0,” said Hoskinson. “Instead of picking a fight, what you have to do is you have to find tokenomics and market structure that allows you to be in a cooperative equilibrium.”

“You can’t build a global ecosystem this way, and you can’t win this way,” he said. “Because here’s the thing. The incumbents are much larger.”

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