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German financial regulator prohibits sales of Ethena's USDe

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BaFin, the German financial regulatory authority, has prohibited all public sales of Ethena GmbH’s USDe (USDe) — a synthetic dollar — claiming that the token violates the European Union’s MiCAR regulations and accused the firm of selling unregistered securities in the region.

According to the announcement from the regulator, BaFin has ordered the firm to freeze the reserve assets that back the token, close down the website portal, and ordered the firm to stop taking new customers.

The regulator also appointed a representative to monitor the ongoing situation with Ethena GmbH In a translated statement, the regulator wrote:

“The BaFin also has reasonable grounds to suspect that Ethena GmbH in Germany sells securities in the form of sUSDe  tokens from Ethena OpCo. Ltd. without the required prospectus.”

“The USDe and sUSDe tokens are interconnected in such a way that investors can receive a sUSDe token in exchange for a USDe token,” the regulator continued.

Despite the ban on primary sales and issuance of the token, the regulator said that secondary sales of the token will not be prohibited or affected.

Ethena Labs also said that the backing of USDe remains unaffected and the token can still be redeemed via Ethena BVI Limited, despite the recent announcement from the German financial regulator.

Source: Ethena Labs

Ethena GmbH files for MiCA approval

Ethena GmbH submitted a request for regulatory approval under MiCA on July 29, 2024, and the firm expected to be “grandfathered” into the existing regulatory framework.

However, BaFin denied the application on March 21, citing “serious deficiencies in the business organization” and a lack of compliance with the MiCA framework.

BaFin acknowledged that there are currently around 5.4 billion Ethena tokens in circulation. However, many of these tokens were minted outside of the German jurisdiction and before MiCA took effect.

Ethena attracts investment for its products

Despite the risks associated with synthetic dollars, Ethena continues to attract institutional investment for its products.

Ethena raised over $100 million from investors in February 2024 to launch a new token called iUSDe geared toward institutional investors.

The firm also partnered with World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol started by US President Donald Trump in December 2024.

As part of the agreement, World Liberty Financial purchased 500,000 ENA tokens — the governance token of Ethena.

On February 26, the MEXC crypto exchange also announced a $20 million investment in Ethena’s USDe to promote stablecoin use.

Magazine: Unstablecoins: Depegging, bank runs and other risks loom

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Fidelity files for Ethereum-based US Treasury fund ‘OnChain’

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Fidelity Investments has filed to register a tokenized version of its US dollar money market fund on Ethereum — joining the likes of BlackRock and Franklin Templeton in the blockchain tokenization space.

Fidelity’s March 21 filing with the US securities regulator said “OnChain” would help track transactions of the Fidelity Treasury Digital Fund (FYHXX) — an $80 million fund consisting almost entirely of US Treasury bills.

While OnChain is pending regulatory approval, it is expected to take effect on May 30, Fidelity said.

Fidelity’s filing to register a tokenized version of the Fidelity Treasury Digital Fund. Source: Securities and Exchange Commission

The OnChain share class aims to provide investors transparency and verifiable tracking of share transactions of FYHXX, although Fidelity will maintain traditional book-entry records as the official ownership ledger.

“Although the secondary recording of the OnChain class on a blockchain will not represent the official record of ownership, the transfer agent will reconcile the secondary blockchain transactions with the official records of the OnChain class on at least a daily basis.”

Fidelity said the US Treasury bills wouldn’t be directly tokenized.

The $5.8 trillion asset manager said it may also expand OnChain to other blockchains in the future.

Related: Ethereum eyes 65% gains from ‘cycle bottom’ as BlackRock ETH stash crosses $1B

Asset managers have increasingly turned to blockchain to tokenize Treasury bills, bonds and private credit over the past few years.

The RWA tokenization market for Treasury products is currently valued at $4.78 billion, led by the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) at $1.46 billion, according to rwa.xyz.

Market caps of blockchain-based Treasury products. Source: rwa.xyz

Over $3.3 billion worth of RWAs are tokenized on the Ethereum network, followed by Stellar at $465.6 million.

BlackRock’s head of crypto, Robbie Mitchnick, recently said Ethereum is still the “natural default answer” for TradFi firms looking to tokenize RWAs onchain.

“There was no question that the blockchain we would start our tokenization on would be Ethereum, and that’s not just a BlackRock thing, that’s the natural default answer.”

“Clients clearly are making choices that they do value the decentralization, they do value the credibility, and the security and that’s a great advantage that Ethereum continues to have,” he said at the Digital Asset Summit in New York on March 20.

Magazine: Comeback 2025: Is Ethereum poised to catch up with Bitcoin and Solana?

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Cathie Wood to kick off El Salvador's AI public education program

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Cathie Wood, founder of the Ark Invest investment firm, will give the inaugural lecture for El Salvador’s new Urban Centers for Welfare and Opportunities (CUBO) AI program, a public education initiative spearheaded by the government of El Salvador.

According to El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office, the program will bring university-level AI courses to students and professionals and follows the country’s highly successful CUBO Bitcoin (BTC) and Lightning Network developer program.

The program will leverage industry experts to provide AI education to the public. El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office wrote in a March 23 X post:

“As El Salvador turbocharges its transformation into the ultimate tech and financial powerhouse of the region, CUBO AI will arm students and professionals in the country with the tools to dominate the AI frontier.”

El Salvador continues to attract crypto businesses and foreign direct investment as the Central American country positions itself as a regional tech and digital finance hub.

Cathie Wood pictured left, with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele in the center, and economist Art Laffer, on the right, meet in May 2024. Source: El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office

Related: El Salvador acquired over 13 BTC since March 1, despite IMF deal

El Salvador becoming a regional tech hub amid education and investment push

El Salvador has taken several steps to establish itself as a regional hub for innovation, including integrating Bitcoin classes into public education, leveraging geothermal energy to mine BTC, and passing pro-crypto and AI policies.

Cathie Wood met with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele in May 2024 to discuss the future of digital assets and AI policy in the Central American country, including potential education initiatives tailored by Ark Invest.

Wood left the meeting confident that El Salvador could increase its gross domestic product (GDP) tenfold over the next five years if it continues pursuing its tech-focused agenda.

“The President could scale El Salvador’s GDP 10-fold during his next 5-year term,” Wood wrote in a May 2024 X post and praised Bukele as forward-thinking.

Bukele also met with Elon Musk in September 2024 to discuss artificial intelligence and other 21st-century technologies, including crypto.

Musk likewise praised Bukele as “an amazing leader,” and the two continue to build rapport that could potentially lead to collaboration between the businessman and the government of El Salvador.

Magazine: El Salvador’s national Bitcoin chief has been orange-pilling Argentina

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Bitcoin mining hashprice stays flat despite higher difficulty: Report

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The Bitcoin (BTC) mining hashprice — a miner’s daily revenue per unit of hashing power expended to mine blocks — has remained constant at around $48 per petahash per second (PH/s), despite a slight 1.4% uptick in Bitcoin difficulty.

Data from CoinWarz shows that the Bitcoin difficulty climbed to 113.76 trillion at block 889,081 on March 23, up from the 112.1 trillion difficulty in the previous epoch.

According to TheMinerMag, a hashprice below $50 places financial stress on miners running older hardware such as the Antminer S19 XP and S19 Pro.

The older hardware coupled with declining network transaction fees risks pushing some miners into unprofitable territory — forcing them to turn off their hardware until they upgrade their application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) or network conditions change.

Mining firms have been struggling since the April 2024 Bitcoin halving event, which slashed the block subsidy to 3.125 BTC per block mined, generally increasing network difficulty, and the recent downturn in the crypto markets due to macroeconomic uncertainty.

Bitcoin mining difficulty. Source: CoinWarz

Related: SEC says proof-of-work mining does not constitute securities dealing

Miners have a rough start to 2025

Research from financial services firm JPMorgan shows that publicly listed Bitcoin mining companies collectively lost 22% of their share value in February 2025.

Even miners who diversified operations into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing data centers, to shore up revenue lost through mining activities, are facing financial pressures, the JPMorgan report found.

The financial services firm cited the release of DeepSeek R1, an open-source AI model trained for a fraction of the cost as the leading models and performs on par with closed-source AI products, as a strain on large AI data centers.

Although the Bitcoin network’s hashrate oscillates in the short term, the long term trend is up-only. Source: CryptoQuant

A steadily rising network hashrate, which is the sum total computing power in the Bitcoin network, is also creating increased competition among miners, who must expend greater computing resources to remain profitable.

Fears of a prolonged trade war between the United States and Canada, alongside constant tariff headlines, have put miners on edge.

Threats from Canadian officials to levy tariffs on energy exports to the United States place even more pressure on the already struggling industry.

Magazine: Korea to lift corporate crypto ban, beware crypto mining HDs: Asia Express

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