The cryptocurrency markets have been energized again as Bitcoin ($BTC) surpassed the $78,000 mark, reaching its highest level in 11 weeks.
With investor risk appetite increasing, Scott Melker and macro strategist Noelle Acheson discussed the current state of the market and the dynamics behind Bitcoin’s rise on “The Wolf Of All Streets” channel.
Noelle Acheson stated that although Bitcoin is still viewed as a “risk asset” in the traditional financial world, its performance during times of crisis has shattered this perception.
Weekly chart showing the recent rise in $BTC price.
Experts, noting that Bitcoin has always gained value 60 days after seven major crises since 2020 (including the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank), argued that $BTC actually serves as a “protection against chaos.”
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One of the most critical points that stood out was the “worrying” signals from the bond market while stock markets were hitting record highs. The rise in 10-year Treasury yields to 4.2% – 4.3% indicates that markets have not yet found the relief they expected from the Fed’s interest rate cuts.
The broadcast stated that the hacking incidents in DeFi (Decentralized Finance) protocols last week and the vulnerabilities in platforms like “Kelp DAO” have created significant distrust in the market. This situation has driven institutional investors away from DeFi and towards Bitcoin, resulting in Bitcoin dominance reaching its highest level in the past year.
Analysts believe that data from derivative markets has not yet signaled “overheating” (frothy), leaving the door open for a new rally towards the $82,000-$84,000 levels. However, experts emphasize that investors should exercise caution due to speculation surrounding the Trump administration and global geopolitical risks.
Writer-director Jon Favreau successfully launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe with 2008’s Iron Man, but there was one MCU move he admits that he resisted behind the scenes: killing off Robert Downey Jr.’s beloved Tony Stark in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.
Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Tuesday to promote his upcoming Star Wars film The Mandalorian and Grogu, Favreau says he called up Anthony and Joe Russo to push back against their plan to end the character he helped create.
“I talked to the Russos, I said ‘I don’t know if people are gonna like … I don’t know, it’s really going to impact people because they were kids that grew up with that character,” Favreau said. “But I have to tell you, it was handled so well by them. And Gwyneth [Paltrow] and Robert did such a wonderful job acting, and I think it added a poignancy to it. I think they did a wonderful job. I was wrong.”
Favreau admitted even he got emotional when he watched the film. “I was choked up,” he said. “Even though it’s a movie, those people, those characters, have been part of my life for so long.”
Favreau added he’s “excited to see” Downey as Doctor Doom in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday. He noted the “smartest thing I ever did” was give himself a cameo as the character Happy Hogan in the first Iron Man movie, because he’s been invited back to appear so many times in the franchise that the role has “put my kids through school.”
Asked who is “scarier,” Star Wars fans or MCU fans, Favreau diplomatically replied they’re “equally invested” in their respective franchises, but Star Wars fans have a longer attachment given the first film came out in 1977.
Favreau showed a new clip from TheMandalorian and Grogu, which you can watch around the 9-minute mark in the footage below. The film opens May 22.
Netflix is nearing a deal to buy the historic Radford Studio Center lot, a purchase that would give the entertainment giant ownership of a major Los Angeles production campus.
Goldman Sachs, which took over the property earlier this year, is expected to sell the property for roughly $330 million, a source familiar with the deal tells The Hollywood Reporter, describing the agreement as “all but done.”
According to the source, Netflix didn’t participate in the first round of bids, which didn’t include other major studios and started roughly two months ago. Offers, most of which didn’t hit $300 million, were mostly submitted by entities looking for what could be a generational discount on the 55-acre property.
The sale is the first deal of its kind involving a major production campus in more than five years. It’s expected to set a baseline for lenders to rely on when renewing loans for comparable properties. “This is going to set the bar,” the source adds.
The buy could shake up Netflix’s base of operations in Los Angeles. For years, it has been the anchor tenant at Sunset Studios, making the ICON building its L.A. headquarters and occupying the EPIC and CUE buildings as part of the complex on Sunset Boulevard.
The streaming giant has a lease on those buildings through 2031 with the owner, Hudson Pacific Properties, which receives $27 million in base annualized rent from Netflix. As of early March, Hudson Pacific CEO Victor Coleman said at an investor conference that “our conversations with them are fluid” regarding future leases.
Netflix is the No. 2 tenant for Hudson Pacific among its office tenants, occupying 722,305 square feet of space, just behind Google, so a loss of the streaming giant would be a big one for the soundstage operator. (Amazon is its No. 3 tenant, and the company also has tech giants like Salesforce, PayPal and Elon Musk’s X AI leasing its properties.)
“We remain fully engaged with Netflix and believe this portfolio is the optimal long-term solution for their L.A. office needs, given the quality, location and expansion potential of these assets,” Coleman had said on the company’s February earnings call.
Netflix leases its Sunset Bronson Studios location (pictured during the 2023 labor strikes).
Tiffany Taylor/THR Staff
Radford, meanwhile, counts iconic titles like Seinfeld and Gilligan’s Island among the classic shows that have filmed on its soundstages. But even in corporate materials it describes itself as facing “decades of under-investment,” and renovation plans have been put in motion.
The historic studio was in the hands of the then-named ViacomCBS corp until 2021 when it was sold — as part of a slimming down of the Shari Redstone-run Paramount empire — to Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital Management for $1.85 billion.
The Michael Hackman-led firm had bet that studio infrastructure would be a hot commodity as majors had been bulking up on spending for streaming shows near the height of what was then a race to catch up to Netflix. Wall Street and private equity firms also saw the upside in studio lot infrastructure at the time, which was not too far removed from the COVID-19 pandemic, when office space was seen as a shakier bet.
Then, ahead of the 2023 dual labor strikes from the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA, the content spend pullback hit and stage occupancy started waning. (Now uncertainty about how AI workflows will impact content creation also factor in to big bets on soundstage infrastructure.)
Netflix could strike the deal as the value of L.A. studio real estate plunges amid a historic production slump in the region. Major soundstages recorded a 62 percent occupancy rate during the first six months of 2025, down one percent from anemic levels recorded in 2024, according to data released from local film office FilmLA in March. From 2016 to 2022, soundstages participating in the survey reported an average occupancy rate of at least 90 percent.
The filming downturn hit Radford, which has 22 soundstages, especially hard since fixed operating costs remain the same regardless of how many productions shoot on the property.
A green screen on set at the Radford lot in Studio City circa 2018.
Photographed By Yuri Hasegawa
Investment bank Goldman Sachs had taken over the Radford lot after Hackman defaulted on its mortgage, Bloomberg reported in January, citing a letter to investors that wasn’t made public. Hackman also operates the historic Raleigh Studios in Los Angeles, the Sony Pictures Animation Campus in Culver City and more major soundstages and production facilities.
Last year Hackman put a “For Sale” sign on a Raleigh sibling location, Saticoy Studios in Van Nuys, at an $18 million price tag, with an exec at the company telling THR that it was “non-core to our wider studio portfolio, which focuses on larger, flagship properties.” The main Raleigh Studios location, located on Melrose Avenue, has Netflix as the anchor tenant through 2031 as well.
That would mean that by 2031, Netflix may be able to be on the move at both Sunset and Raleigh studios should it choose to do so. And a Radford lot purchase — it boasts 22 soundstages, three backlot sets, 18 office buildings and 20 bungalows — could make for suitable new digs for Ted Sarandos and Co. in L.A. to go along with its restored Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Blvd.
Netflix, which just received a $2.8 billion break up fee in connection with its abandoned pursuit of Warner Bros., has made an effort to build its soundstage bases over the years, outside of its L.A. office. Those include the formerly named ABQ Studios in Albuquerque, New Mexico as well as $1 billion to build its East coast base at the former site of Fort Monmouth, New Jersey (which won’t be ready for a few years).
That’s not counting the Los Gatos-based company’s expanding global office and studio space portfolio. This year alone, Netflix unveiled its Mexico City headquarters, opened a Buenos Aires, Argentina office and touted an expansion of its Poland central European hub as it builds infrastructure to provide a content pipeline to serve its 325 million subscribers.
Sunset Studios soundstage operator Hudson Pacific, meanwhile, has looked to the East coast for an expansion, opening its purpose-built Sunset Pier 94 Studios in Manhattan in January with Paramount Television Studios’ Dexter: Resurrection signing on to produce its second season at the location.
April 22 Story updated throughout with additional reporting.
In the lawsuit Sun alleged that World Liberty illegally froze his holdings of tokens issued by the company.
Published On 22 Apr 202622 Apr 2026
Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun has sued World Liberty Financial, the digital currency venture cofounded by United States President Donald Trump and his sons, alleging that World Liberty illegally froze his holdings of tokens issued by the company.
Sun alleged in the lawsuit, filed in a federal court in California on Tuesday, that World Liberty secretly installed tools to prevent the sale of his tokens after they became tradable in September 2025. The lawsuit also alleges that World Liberty threatened to “burn” – or permanently delete – his holdings, even while they were in Sun’s digital wallet.
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Sun, the Hong Kong-based founder of the Tron cryptocurrency, bought $45m of WLFI tokens – some 3 billion – and was later awarded a further 1 billion tokens after being named as an adviser to World Liberty, the lawsuit said.
Sun’s portfolio of 4 billion WLFI tokens is worth roughly $320m, according to a Reuters news agency calculation based on the latest WLFI price.
World Liberty Financial declined to comment on the lawsuit. A spokesperson for the company had told Reuters earlier this week that Sun “is not an advisor at World Liberty Financial, and he has never held an operational role in the company”.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
World Liberty is the most prominent of several lucrative crypto businesses cofounded or controlled by the Trump family, which has already made more than $1bn from World Liberty, according to a Reuters analysis. World Liberty’s bylaws state that 75 percent of the revenue from WLFI token sales is routed to the Trumps.
World Liberty is under increasing scrutiny from some of its investors, who have complained for months about what they describe as the company’s lack of transparency, centralised governance structure and failure to respond to community complaints.
In the lawsuit, Sun described himself as “one of World Liberty’s anchor investors”.
World Liberty’s structure means that the WLFI tokens Sun bought in 2024 are not equivalent to standard company shares. The tokens do not carry ownership in the company, and holders are not entitled to dividends, although they do gain a limited say in the company’s governance.
Souring relationship
The lawsuit caps a dramatic deterioration of relations between Sun and World Liberty.
In September, Sun claimed that the company had frozen his token holdings, and earlier this month, he alleged in a post on social media platform X that World Liberty had secretly embedded what he described as a “backdoor blacklisting function” in the blockchain-based contracts used for the tokens.
That gave World Liberty “unilateral power” to “freeze, restrict, and effectively confiscate the property rights” of token holders without cause or recourse, Sun wrote on X.
World Liberty at that time responded to Sun’s allegations with a post on X that said: “We have the contracts. We have the evidence. We have the truth. See you in court pal.”
The lawsuit said Sun “has long been [and remains] an ardent supporter of President Trump and the Trump family”.
Frozen out
The lawsuit alleges that World Liberty representatives “repeatedly contacted and pressured” Sun to invest additional capital in the venture between April and July 2025, including requests to commit to acquiring $200m in a separate World Liberty stablecoin token and to acquire an equity stake in the company.
Sun said in a post on X on Wednesday that he had “tried in good faith” to resolve his complaints with World Liberty, adding that its team “refused my requests to unfreeze my tokens and restore my rights as a token holder”.
A measure proposed by the company last week would restrict early investors holding a combined 17 billion tokens from being able to trade all of their tokens until 2030, a year after the president is scheduled to leave office.
Sun said he “strongly opposes” the new governance proposal, but could not vote on it as World Liberty had frozen his early investor tokens.
Sun has also invested heavily in Trump’s so-called meme coin.
Trump has launched a slate of crypto-friendly policies since returning to the White House in January 2025.
In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission settled a 2023 lawsuit against Sun for $10m. The lawsuit had alleged fraud, selling unregistered crypto securities and hiding payments to celebrities to promote his products. Sun made no admission of wrongdoing.
United States President Donald Trump has described the Iranian leadership as “seriously fractured” as he announced an extension to a ceasefire.
Trump said on Tuesday that the ceasefire would be extended to allow more time for negotiations and appeared to be suggesting that Iran’s leadership is in disarray.
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He added that the US naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian ports would remain in place.
Three weeks ago, Trump claimed the US military campaign had succeeded in its goal of forcing a change in Iran’s government and the US was now dealing with “a whole new set of people” in charge of the country.
On April 11, Iran sent a delegation led by parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf to Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, to begin talks with the US.
So is Iran’s government “fractured”? We take a look at the key Iranian stakeholders and power centres in Iran and how their approach to US negotiations may differ.
Who are the key figures in Iran, and are they ‘fractured’ over talks with the US?
Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei
Khamenei is the second son of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in US-Israeli air strikes on Tehran on the first day of the war on February 28. Mojtaba Khamenei was selected as Iran’s new supreme leader on March 8, according to state media reports.
The 56-year old has never run for office or been elected but has for decades been a highly influential figure in the inner circle of his father, cultivating deep ties with the the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Observers said the younger Khamenei’s ascension is a clear sign that more hardline factions in Iran’s establishment have retained power and could indicate that the government has little desire to agree to a deal or negotiations with the US in the short term.
Since his ascension, however, Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public. On March 13, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claimed Iran’s new supreme leader had been wounded in US-Israeli strikes.
An April 11, a Reuters news agency report that quoted three people close to the supreme leader’s inner circle said Khamenei was still recovering from severe facial and leg injuries suffered in the air strike that killed his father. The sources were quoted as saying he was taking part in meetings with senior officials through audioconferencing.
Al Jazeera could not independently verify these claims.
According to state media reports, Khamenei has been active in making decisions on the war.
In a message read on Iranian state TV on April 18, Khamenei warned that the Iranian navy was ready to inflict “new bitter defeats” on the US and Israel as tensions escalated in the Strait of Hormuz.
Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf
Ghalibaf, 64, has served as Iran’s parliamentary speaker since 2020.
He was commander of the IRGC air force from 1997 to 2000. After that, he served as the country’s police chief. From 2005 to 2017, he was the mayor of Tehran.
Ghalibaf stood in elections for president in 2005, 2013, 2017 and 2024. He withdrew his bid for president before the election in 2017 when Hassan Rouhani won a second term.
Last month in the early days of the US-Israel war on Iran, it was suggested that Ghalibaf was the Trump administration’s “pick” to lead the country after the war ended. He has also been the main Iranian official leading negotiations with Washington since they began on April 11 in Pakistan.
In an overnight post on X on Tuesday, Ghalibaf wrote that Iran is “prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield” after Trump threatened Tehran with “problems like they’ve never seen before” if the two-week ceasefire ended this week without a deal.
Ghalibaf expressed anger at Trump for “imposing a siege and violating the ceasefire”.
“We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats, and in the past two weeks, we have prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield,” he said.
The ceasefire was supposed to have ended on Wednesday, but shortly before its expiration, Trump extended it until Iran “can come up with a unified proposal”.
Within Iran, however, Ghalibaf’s willingness to engage in negotiations with the US has been criticised by some people who have accused him of “betrayal”.
According to a report on Monday by the Iran International TV channel, some critics of Ghalibaf have said on social media platforms in Iran that the parliamentary speaker’s suggestion that peace talks with the US were progressing was “worrying”.
“There is no good in negotiation except harm,” one critic said.
But Ghalibaf has defended undertaking negotiations with the US. In a televised interview on Saturday, he said diplomacy does not mean “a withdrawal from Iran’s demands” but is a way to “consolidate military gains and translate them into political outcomes and lasting peace”.
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
Iran’s military power structure is often described as opaque and complex.
The nation operates parallel armies, multiple intelligence services and layered command structures, all of which answer directly to the supreme leader, who serves as the commander in chief of all the armed forces.
The parallel armies comprise the Artesh, Iran’s regular army, which is responsible for territorial defence, defence of Iran’s airspace and conventional warfare, and the IRGC, whose role goes beyond defence and includes protecting Iran’s political structure.
The IRGC also controls Iran’s airspace and drone arsenal, which has become the backbone of Iran’s deterrence strategy against attacks by Israel and the US.
After the US and Israel struck Iran and killed Ali Khamenei, the IRGC promised revenge and launched what it called “the heaviest offensive operations in the history of the armed forces of the Islamic Republic against occupied lands [a reference to Israel] and the bases of American terrorists”. Since then, it has struck US military assets and infrastructure across the Gulf region.
Some experts said Iranian officials negotiating with the US are more closely aligned with the IRGC than other leaders and groups.
In an interview with Al Jazeera on March 25, Babak Vahdad, a political analyst specialising in Iran, noted that Iran’s appointment of Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council suggested Iranian negotiations would become more tightly aligned with the IRGC’s priorities. Zolghadr is a former IRGC commander and has been secretary of the advisory Expediency Council since 2023.
But Javad Heiran-Nia, who directs the Persian Gulf Studies Group at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Iran, said a divide between the IRGC and Iran’s negotiating team was plain to see.
Iran has attacked three cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz since Trump announced the ceasefire on April 6 and said the US naval blockade will remain.
“The attack on tankers during the ceasefire demonstrates the IRGC’s dominance over the diplomatic team and its disregard for their positions,” he told Al Jazeera.
IRGC members attend an exercise in southern Iran on February 16, 2026 [Handout/IRGC via West Asia News Agency and Reuters]
Paydari Front
Heiran-Nia pointed to the role of the Paydari Front (Steadfastness Front), whose members are hardliners within Iran’s political structure who are deeply committed to preserving the original principles of the 1979 Islamic revolution and the absolute power of the supreme leader. This group, he said, has been using the negotiations to cement its position within the power structure and among its support base.
He added that the Paydari Front has also been questioning the negotiations.
“In Iran’s current political climate, various groups are trying to raise their weight, both within the power structure and in public opinion. Of course, the Paydari Front’s efforts are more meaningful in relation to their own support base rather than trying to influence other segments of society because their hardline approach holds no appeal for other social classes,” he said.
The influence this group could have over the progress of talks is debatable, however, he added.
“If a deal is reached, it will likely have a sovereign character. The establishment will impose its own narrative, and the IRGC will accept it. In the meantime, the hardliners will attack the administration of [President] Masoud Pezeshkian and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf over the deal. However, it is unlikely that this will spread to the decision-making body of the establishment,” he added.
The “Ring by Spring” TikTok trend — during which girls hope to get engaged before graduating college — is coming to life on Hulu‘s upcoming dating show, “Ring by Spring Break.”
Per the official logline, the series “is a bold dating series that drops single Christian college students into a steamy spring break in Cabo, where finding ‘The One’ isn’t a dream … it’s a deadline. As faith battles temptations in paradise, will they leave engaged or graduate alone?”
“Ring by Spring Break” is executive produced by Jimmy Fox and Emily Bon from Fremantle. Sam Dean serves as showrunner.
The streaming service has leaned heavily into romantic shows as of late. In March, “Love Overboard,” hosted by “The Bachelorette” star Gabby Windey and produced by Alex Cooper, debuted, following 22 singles living on a luxury yacht in Malta — half living in luxury, half working as crew and trying to gain top-deck access.
Last summer, Colton Underwood and Kaitlyn Bristowe co-hosted “Are You My First?” for Hulu, a dating show featuring a cast of virgins looking for love, from the producers of “Love Island USA.”
Additionally, “The Bachelor,” “The Bachelorette,” “Bachelor in Paradise,” “The Golden Bachelor” and “The Golden Bachelorette” all stream on Hulu after airing on ABC. After pausing Taylor Frankie Paul’s season of “The Bachelorette,” it has not yet been revealed when the franchise will return.
“Ring by Spring Break” will stream on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers in the U.S.
Imagine this: Instead of committing tens of millions of dollars straight away to a full season of a TV show, you film one episode for a few million to see if it’s as good on-screen as it is on the page. If it is, you pick up more episodes. If it’s not, you move on. Sounds crazy, right?
Well, kids, gather round, and let’s reintroduce you to the concept of the “pilot.” The idea of shooting a tester episode before committing to paying for an entire season is back in vogue during these belt-tightening times. And streamers, which once prided themselves on being the anti-networks, are once again taking a cue from the way TV used to be made.
HBO Max has two pilots in contention: cop drama “American Blue” and the family drama “How to Survive Without Me.” Sarah Aubrey, head of original programming for HBO Max, says that her team is still highly selective when it comes to pilot orders, but the success of “The Pitt” — which has been renewed for a third season — was a big motivating factor for recent ones: “[It’s] born out of a desire to have shows with more episodes that return annually,” she says.
Hulu, meanwhile, has several high-profile pilots in the works, including the drama “Foster Dade” from Greg Berlanti and Bash Doran. The streamer also has Ryan Coogler’s “X-Files” reboot, with Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel in a new iteration of the beloved paranormal procedural. “Coogler’s ‘X-Files’ is definitely at the top of my list,” one TV lit agent tells Variety. “He is absolutely on fire right now, and that IP has such a rabid fan base.”
On the broadcast side, Variety previously reported on NBC’s mission to reintroduce pilots to the TV ecosystem. The network has commissioned eight pilots in its biggest return to a traditional pilot season in years. Leading the crop is the reboot of “The Rockford Files,” with David Boreanaz in the lead role, which has generated buzz since it was announced.
Pilots have served a vital function practically since TV was invented. They give networks, studios and even creators the chance to make adjustments on a show before barreling headlong into full-scale production.
But when the streaming arms race for talent was in full swing in the 2010s, pilots mostly fell by the wayside as fierce competition led to straight-to-series orders — handed out like Ted Lasso dispensing pun-heavy pearls of wisdom.
“We all had such strong appetites in that gold-rush period,” says Simran Sethi, president of scripted programming at Hulu Originals, ABC Entertainment and Freeform.
Now, falling episodic budgets and lower overall production have spurred those at the top to rethink how to approach pickups — thus the increase in pilot orders, both in streaming and at the broadcast networks.
“I think that what we all learned with this adjustment to a slightly different volume is being a little bit more steady and focused on these bets that we’re making to really set ourselves up for long-running success,” Sethi says.
The shift in strategy is already bearing fruit. Netflix picked up a sequel series to “A Different World” in 2025 after giving the project one of the only pilot orders in the streamer’s history. Hulu ordered its upcoming “Prison Break” reboot from Elgin James and the drama “Phony,” starring Connie Britton and Sam Nivola, following pilot orders. And FX, long an advocate for pilots, recently picked up a “Snowfall” spinoff and the Peter Gould drama “Disinherited” off pilot orders.
Does this mean we’ll see a return to a time of 100-plus pilot orders in a given year? Don’t count on it.
“It’s really for these shows where we’re in a certain budget model and trying to build a system that can sustain 15 episodes coming back annually,” Aubrey says. “Once you get up to a certain price point, it doesn’t really make sense financially for a really big effects-heavy show to make a pilot.”
Meta has introduced a new “live chats” feature to Threads, enabling people on the platform to participate in real-time conversations about live events they’re interested in. Live chats can be hosted within Threads communities, the topic-specific social spaces that Meta introduced last year.
The new feature sounds a bit like Threads’ take on Instagram’s broadcast channels, but the latter only allows for one-way messaging. Live chats can be hosted by select creators, including Community Champions — users highly engaged within specific communities — and media personalities. Once a chat is launched or scheduled, the host chooses who is invited to contribute and can then share the link publicly.
You can post photos, videos, links and emoji reactions as well as text-based messages. If you’re unable to send messages in a live chat that is at capacity, you can still watch it, react to others messages and vote in polls. Live chats remain open to view after they’ve ended, and you don’t need to be part of a community to join.
Meta is debuting its new social feature in the NBAThreads Community during the Playoffs, with Malika Andrews, Rachel Nichols, Trysta Krick, David Rushing and Lexis Mickens named as hosts. Live chats will appear at the top of the NBAThreads Community feed, and can also be shared in a post that might appear on your main feed in Threads. You’ll also see a red ring around a host’s profile photo when they’re live.
Meta says live chats will gradually be rolled out to more communities on Threads, with features like co-hosting, lock screen widgets and the ability to quote and share messages from a chat on your feed coming soon.
Meta has been steadily expanding its X rival’s features since it launched in 2023. It started small with searchable topics (note: not hashtags) and custom feeds, before rolling out communities last year. It also started testing long-form text posts and just this week gave Threads a long-overdue facelift on web. Back in October, the company announced that its text-based social media platform now has 150 million daily users.
KELP DAO EXPLOIT: A cross-chain bridge holding nearly a fifth of a restaked ether token’s circulating supply just got drained, and the fallout is moving through DeFi faster than Kelp DAO can pause contracts. An attacker drained 116,500 rsETH (restaked ether) from Kelp DAO’s LayerZero-powered bridge at 17:35 UTC over the weekend, worth roughly $292 million at current prices and representing about 18% of rsETH’s 630,000 token circulating supply tracked by CoinGecko. LayerZero is a cross-chain messaging layer, or the infrastructure that lets different blockchains send verified instructions to each other. Kelp DAO is a liquid restaking protocol, which takes user-deposited $ETH, routes it through EigenLayer to earn additional yield on top of standard Ethereum staking rewards, and issues rsETH as a tradeable receipt. The bridge that was drained held the rsETH reserve backing wrapped versions of the token deployed on more than 20 other blockchains. The attacker tricked LayerZero’s cross-chain messaging layer into believing a valid instruction had arrived from another network, which triggered Kelp’s bridge to release 116,500 rsETH to an attacker-controlled address. Kelp’s emergency pauser multisig froze the protocol’s core contracts 46 minutes after the successful drain, at 18:21 UTC. Two follow-up attempts at 18:26 UTC and 18:28 UTC both reverted, each carrying the same LayerZero packet attempting another 40,000 rsETH drain worth roughly $100 million. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.
NORTH KOREA CRYPTO HEIST PLAYBOOK: Less than three weeks after North Korea-linked hackers used social engineering to hit crypto trading firm Drift, hackers tied to the nation appear to have pulled off another major exploit with Kelp. The attack on Kelp, a restaking protocol tied into LayerZero’s cross-chain infrastructure, suggests an evolution in how North Korea-linked hackers operate, not just looking for bugs or stolen credentials, but exploiting the basic assumptions built into decentralized systems. Taken together, the two incidents point to something more organized than a string of one-off hacks, as North Korea continues to escalate its efforts to hijack funds from the crypto sector. “This is not a series of incidents; it is a cadence,” said Alexander Urbelis, chief information security officer and general counsel at ENS Labs. “You cannot patch your way out of a procurement schedule.” More than $500 million was siphoned across the Drift and Kelp exploits in just over two weeks. At its core, the Kelp exploit did not involve breaking encryption or cracking keys. The system actually worked the way it was designed to. Rather, attackers manipulated the data feeding into the system and forced it to rely on those compromised inputs, causing it to approve transactions that never actually occurred. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
AAVE AFFECTED BY KELP DAO HACK: An attacker exploited that setup by forging a transfer message that appeared valid. The system approved the transfer even though the tokens were never taken out of the sending chain, meaning new tokens were effectively created without backing, releasing 116,500 rsETH from the Ethereum-side bridge. Rather than selling the assets on the open market, the attacker deposited 89,567 rsETH into Aave as collateral and borrowed roughly $190 million in $ETH and related assets across Ethereum and Arbitrum, according to the report. This left Aave exposed to collateral whose backing may be significantly impaired. Aave Labs said it moved quickly to contain the risk. Within hours, the protocol froze rsETH markets across its deployments, set loan-to-value ratios to zero, and halted new borrowing against the asset. The outcome now depends largely on how Kelp handles the shortfall. If losses are spread across all rsETH holders, the token would face an estimated 15% depegging (meaning the value of the staked tokens would not match the value of actual $ETH), resulting in about $124 million in bad debt for Aave. If losses are instead isolated to Layer 2 networks, the impact would be far more severe, with bad debt rising to roughly $230 million and concentrated on networks such as Arbitrum and Mantle.— Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
COINBASE COMMISSIONS PAPER ON QUANTUM COMPUTING RISKS: A new report commissioned by Coinbase sounds a cautious, but urgent, alarm: Quantum computing won’t break crypto tomorrow, but the industry can’t afford to wait. The 50-page paper, authored by an independent advisory board that includes prominent cryptographers and academics like Dan Boneh of Stanford University, Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation and Sreeram Kannan of Eigen Labs, concludes that while today’s blockchains remain secure, a future “fault-tolerant quantum computer” capable of breaking widely used encryption is increasingly plausible, and preparation must begin now. In recent months, concerns around quantum risk have moved further into the mainstream. Google researchers have published estimates suggesting that a sufficiently advanced quantum computer could one day break Bitcoin’s cryptography. Major crypto ecosystems have already started mapping out their responses. The Ethereum Foundation has proposed new types of digital signatures that are designed to be safe against quantum computers, while Solana and others are experimenting with quantum-resistant wallet designs. The report stresses that current quantum machines are far from powerful enough to crack the cryptography underpinning Bitcoin, Ethereum and other networks. Breaking standard encryption would require vast computational overhead, a milestone still considered a major engineering challenge. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
In Other News
A chunk of the Kelp DAO haul is no longer going anywhere. Arbitrum’s Security Council froze 30,766 $ETH worth roughly $71 million on Monday night, moving funds linked to Saturday’s $292 million rsETH exploit into an intermediary wallet that can only be accessed through further Arbitrum governance action. The council said it acted on law enforcement’s input regarding the exploiter’s identity and executed the freeze “without impacting any Arbitrum users or applications.” The transfer completed at 11:26 p.m. ET on April 20, according to Arbitrum’s statement on X. The stolen funds are no longer under the control of the address that originally held them. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.
A Polymarket contract on whether Kelp DAO will spread the losses from the weekend’s $292 million exploit beyond those directly affected is pointing to a clear answer: probably not. Bettors are giving a 14% chance that Kelp will “socialize the losses,” or implement a mechanism forcing rsETH holders on Ethereum, which wasn’t hit, to share the pain of users on other chains. The attackers drained roughly 116,500 rsETH from a LayerZero-powered bridge that held the reserves backing the token across more than 20 blockchains. That left parts of the system undercollateralized, with some holders effectively owning tokens no longer fully backed by ether ($ETH). “Socializing the losses” would mean Kelp redistributes the shortfall across all rsETH holders, including those on the Ethereum mainnet, rather than leaving losses concentrated among users and protocols tied to the compromised bridge. The most widely cited precedent of this approach came in 2016, when Bitfinex imposed losses on all users after a $60 million hack, effectively mutualizing the hit to avoid shutting down. — Sam Reynolds Read more.
Regulatory and Policy
April appears to be a lost cause for the crypto Clarity Act, but a U.S. Senate committee hearing sometime in May could keep the critical market structure legislation alive, as long as it can reach a final vote of the overall Senate by July, according to lobbyists and a lawmaker aide focusing on the market structure bill’s sluggish progress. The legislative calendar is running out of room for this year, but a Senate aide told CoinDesk that a potential new delay of a couple of weeks — allowing Republican Senator Thom Tillis to finish discussions with bankers over stablecoin-yield concerns — is not yet pushing this work past the point of no return. The aide also said that earlier negotiations over decentralized finance (DeFi) protections are effectively settled, leaving few other impediments in the way of a committee approval.One of the chief problems the crypto industry faces (if it can leap the stubborn hurdle of the banking sector’s objections about stablecoin rewards) is that the Senate Banking Committee hearing that the bill needs to clear would be only a first step of many. — Jesse Hamilton Read more.
Tron creator Justin Sun sued World Liberty Financial, the stablecoin and crypto firm backed by members of U.S. President Donald Trump’s family, on Tuesday, alleging that the project had unfairly locked up his $WLFI holdings, made fraudulent misrepresentations, and threatened and defamed Sun. The lawsuit filed, which includes a line about Sun’s support for Trump himself, alleged that World Liberty’s leadership had engaged “in an illegal scheme to seize property” in the form of Sun’s tokens, which Sun alleged he had purchased after being solicited by the World Liberty team in 2024. “At that pivotal time for World Liberty, Mr. Sun invested $45 million to purchase $WLFI tokens from World Liberty not only because of the project’s claims that it would promote adoption of decentralized finance — an issue Mr. Sun cares deeply about and to which he has devoted much of his life’s work — but also because of the Trump family’s association with the project,” the suit said.— Nikhilesh De & Sam Reynolds Read more.
Calendar
May 5-7, 2026: Consensus, Miami
June 2-3, 2026: Proof of Talk, Paris
June 8-10, 2026: ETHConf, New York
Sept. 29-Oct.1, 2026: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul
