Bitcoiners eye ‘sell in May,’ SBF’s bid for new trial shut down: Hodler’s Digest, April 26 – May 2

US soldier charged over Polymarket bets on Maduro pleads not guilty

The US special forces soldier charged with using classified information about the military operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to bet on Polymarket pleaded not guilty.

Gannon Ken Van Dyke appeared before a Manhattan federal court on Tuesday and pleaded not guilty to the five charges that prosecutors brought on Thursday.

The court released Van Dyke on a $250,000 bond and ordered that he surrender his passport and restrict his travel.

The Justice Department charged Van Dyke with three counts of violating federal commodities laws, one count of wire fraud and one count of unlawful monetary transaction, which together carry a maximum sentence of 60 years in prison if he is found guilty.

Polymarket denies data breach, says hacker is selling public data

Prediction markets platform Polymarket denied recent reports that its customer data was breached, after a hacker on the dark web posted what they claimed was a trove of private user details.

Cybersecurity company Vecert Analyzer and several other X accounts that track dark web activity shared screenshots from DarkForums on Tuesday showing a hacker using the pseudonym “xorcat” claiming to have breached Polymarket.

In the post, xorcat said they had stolen over 300,000 records, including 10,000 unique user profiles with full names, profile images, proxy wallets and base addresses. 

Polymarket called the claims of a data breach “complete and utter nonsense” and said the information the hacker posted is already available online.

US, UAE and China joint effort dismantles 9 crypto scam centers

A Dubai police-led international crackdown on scam rings last week resulted in the arrest of 276 individuals and the shutdown of at least nine crypto scam centers, the US Department of Justice revealed on Wednesday. 

In a joint operation with the FBI and China’s Ministry of Public Security, Dubai authorities arrested 275 people, with an additional person arrested by the Royal Thai Police. 

Six people have been charged in connection with the scam centers. Four of the defendants and two fugitive co-conspirators were charged with federal fraud and money laundering in federal court in San Diego, according to the DOJ. If convicted, each offense carries a potential sentence of up to 20 years in prison and hefty fines.

“The charges and arrests announced today reflect an international consensus that scam centers are unwelcome everywhere and must be rooted out…. In contemporary society, fraud is borderless, and law enforcement activity to combat it and eliminate it is as well,” said US Assistant Attorney General Andrew Tysen Duva. 

Twenty One Capital rises on proposed merger with Strike and Elektron

Shares in the Bitcoin-buying company Twenty One Capital climbed in after-hours trading on Wednesday after its majority shareholder, Tether, proposed a three-way merger with two other crypto companies.

Tether said Wednesday that it intends to vote in favor of a proposed merger between Twenty One Capital and Bitcoin payments company Strike, followed by a proposed merger of the combined company with Bitcoin mining firm Elektron Energy.

Tether added that if the mergers go through, “Strike would be contributing a profitable financial services platform, global distribution and regulatory infrastructure and Elektron would be adding large-scale Bitcoin mining infrastructure, operational depth and proven execution capabilities.”

CLARITY Act stablecoin yield rules finalized: ‘Go time’ for crypto bill

The US CLARITY Act, which aims to provide the US crypto industry with more regulatory clarity, could now move closer to becoming law after new stablecoin yield provisions were published, according to Coinbase chief legal officer Faryar Shirzad.

“It’s time to get CLARITY done,” Shirzad said in an X post on Friday, after US Senator Thom Tillis and US Senator Angela Alsobrooks published the final text aimed at settling the stablecoin yield dispute between the banking and crypto industries, which has centered on whether such yields would harm the banking system’s competitiveness.

“In the end, the banks were able to get more restrictions on rewards, but we protected what matters – the ability for Americans to earn rewards, based on real usage of crypto platforms and networks,” Shirzad said.

Most Memorable Quotations

“In the end, the banks were able to get more restrictions on rewards, but we protected what matters – the ability for Americans to earn rewards, based on real usage of crypto platforms and networks.”

Faryar Shirzad, Coinbase chief legal officer

“History suggests this setup carries meaningful downside risk as Bitcoin remains in a bear market regime.”

CryptoQuant

“Engaging in any way in a prediction market or trying to place bets where we might have inside information deteriorates the confidence that our constituents have in us.”

Bernie Moreno, Republican Senator

Top Prediction of The Week

Can Bitcoin hit $250K this year? Traders say it may be time to ‘sell in May’

Bitcoin (BTC) is trading roughly 40% below its October 2025 record high near $126,000 despite its ongoing recovery.

Still, some of the cryptocurrency’s loudest bulls, including billionaire investor Tim Draper and Fundstrat’s co-founder Tom Lee, have not backed down from their $250,000 year-end prediction, a target that would require more than a threefold rally from current levels.

Peter Brandt, a veteran futures market trader, highlighted a channel pattern on the Bitcoin daily chart, which could keep BTC’s odds of rising toward $250,000 this year low.

As of Tuesday, BTC was showing signs of a pullback after testing the upper boundary near $79,500 as resistance. The cryptocurrency risks declining toward the flag’s lower boundary around the $69,000 level by May if the correction persists.

Top FUD of The Week

Japan tells real estate and crypto sectors to tighten AML checks on property deals

Japan’s financial, law enforcement and real estate regulators issued a joint guidance request warning that crypto assets pose money laundering risk in property transactions.

The request, published on Tuesday, was issued by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, the Financial Services Agency, the National Police Agency and the Ministry of Finance. It was addressed to major real estate and crypto industry bodies, including the Japan Cryptocurrency Business Association and several national real estate federations.

“Crypto assets, which have the nature of being transferred instantly across national borders, are considered to pose a high risk of being used as a payment method in real estate transactions for the purpose of money laundering,” the request states.

AML crackdown eclipses securities enforcement as crypto’s top regulatory risk: Report

Anti-Money Laundering enforcement overtook securities violations as the leading regulatory threat facing crypto companies, according to CertiK, with the United States Department of Justice and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network imposing $900 million in AML-related fines during the first half of 2025.

The shift marks a sharp break from the US Securities and Exchange Commission-led enforcement cycle that defined earlier years of crypto regulation. SEC crypto-specific penalties collapsed 97% in penalty value year over year, dropping from $4.9 billion in 2024 to $142 million in 2025, according to a Tuesday report by blockchain security auditor CertiK.

Transaction monitoring and licensing failures are now drawing penalties that rival or exceed many earlier crypto securities cases. The DOJ’s February 2025 settlement with OKX reached $504 million, while KuCoin paid $297 million in January 2025, both for operating unlicensed money transmitting businesses and Bank Secrecy Act violations.

Judge rejects new trial for former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

A Manhattan federal judge denied former FTX CEO and co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s motion for a new trial, rejecting his claim that there is new evidence.

Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw Bankman-Fried’s trial in 2023 and sentenced him to 25 years in prison in early 2024, wrote in an order on Tuesday that Bankman-Fried’s claim of new evidence and witnesses was baseless.

“This motion appears to be one part of a plan to rescue his reputation that Bankman-Fried hatched and even committed to writing after FTX declared bankruptcy but before he was indicted,” Kaplan wrote.

Bankman-Fried in February had requested a new trial to be overseen by a different judge, making the rare move of filing a motion without consulting his lawyers and while an appeals court was considering his conviction and sentence.

Top Magazine Stories of The Week

AI-driven hacks could kill DeFi — unless projects act now

DeFi projects urgently need to combat AI-assisted attacks with AI-assisted defenses, or they may cease to exist.

Why is Ethereum Foundation selling? BTC futures warning signs: Market Moves

The Bitcoin perpetual futures funding rate turned negative, President Donald Trump’s official TRUMP memecoin continued to slide, and other news.

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