Varys Capital venture investment chief Tom Dunleavy noted that in the past six months, the crypto VC funding environment has changed significantly: well-funded projects are proactively coming to them, while most VC capital has run out or shifted to late-stage investments, extending the fundraising cycle to 2–3 months. Only a few institutions are still making early-stage investments, and in the future they may see investment opportunities on a historic scale.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Chen Weimin, said the timeline for issuing the second batch of stablecoin licenses is still uncertain and may be affected by the two institutions granted licenses in the first batch. In addition, China-funded institutions were advised to put their applications on hold, and the number of institutions ultimately granted licenses will be limited, with only a small number meeting the requirements of the “Stablecoin Ordinance.” HSBC Payme users can enable a stablecoin account, but they must be Hong Kong local residents.

Gate News message, April 8, according to monitoring by Lookonchain, four suspected insider-trading addresses profited by about $663k by betting on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire before April 7. Most of these wallets were created on April 7 and funded after that; a few hours before the ceasefire news was released, they bought the “YES” option. Previously, there was no activity record—only a bet on this event—entered at extremely low odds (3.9%).

Anthropic has applied to the U.S. Federal Election Commission to form a member-funded political action committee, AnthroPAC, a move tied to its dispute with the Trump administration over the use of AI for military purposes. The company previously refused the Pentagon’s request and sued the government; a court has temporarily stayed the finding that it poses a risk to the national security supply chain.

Anchorage Digital and Chainlink Labs jointly funded the "Blockchain Leadership Fund" with the goal of supporting candidates in the midterm elections who promote digital asset policy, and it will also conduct voter education. With the current U.S. crypto legislative process stalled, the relevant organizations are also campaigning for the 2026 election.

Gnosis co-founder and Zisk’s founder announced the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) initiative at the EthCC conference, aiming to provide a framework for Rollups, improve the composability of smart contracts, and address Ethereum’s fragmentation problem. The project received funding from the Ethereum Foundation, and all software will be released as open source to minimize governance and prevent upgrades.

Figure co-founder Mike Cagney announced the launch of the Figure Forge service, which aims to turn blockchain-native loans and other RWAs into participation tokens. The service will be used in the Democratized Prime DeFi market and will offer additional yields through the Hastra protocol, with the liquidity limit order book funded by Figure.

Gate News reports that on March 17, according to Nansen monitoring, 9 wallet addresses collectively accumulated a total of 24.5 million ZRO tokens, valued at $47.5 million. These purchases represent 2.6% of ZRO's circulating supply, with an average entry price of $1.94. All wallets were funded by a certain CEX, and these 9 wallets hold no other tokens, only ZRO.

Deployer announced on March 9th that the BNKR new staking mechanism will go live. Users who stake BNKR can earn reasoning points daily and enjoy discounts on large language model usage. This mechanism is funded by token revenue, emphasizing real profit distribution with no token inflation.

Digital asset investment firm Bitwise Asset Management announces a donation of $233,000 to support Bitcoin open-source developers. The funds come from profits of its spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund and will be distributed to three non-profit organizations to promote Bitcoin project development.