WASHINGTON, D.C. — Unicoin CEO Alex Konanykhin said he’s asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to pull its investigation against the crypto operation and hasn’t yet received a response.

Unicoin represented a final shot against the industry from previous Chair Gary Gensler’s SEC, which informed the firm in an official notice late last year that the regulator intended to accuse it of fraud, deceptive practices and handling unregistered securities. The investigation was announced in the final days of President Joe Biden’s administration in December, before the SEC’s leadership was taken over by those selected by crypto fan President Donald Trump.

The CEO, who has watched a dozen other crypto companies let off the hook of their enforcement actions by the agency’s new management, told CoinDesk he wrote a March 17 letter to the agency’s new Crypto Task Force, asking about the investigation.

«I seek your guidance on the best way to address this abuse of power and bring it to an end,» Konanykhin wrote in the letter, a copy of which has been reviewed by CoinDesk. He requested the matter be terminated and that the conduct of the enforcement official involved with the case at the agency be reviewed, because of his «willingness to weaponize the SEC’s authority for political purposes.»

A spokesperson for the SEC declined to comment on Unicoin’s status on Wednesday. A Unicoin spokesperson told CoinDesk on Tuesday that the company «remains in the final stages of the SEC review process. As of now, we have not received any new updates or formal feedback from the SEC regarding our registration. We are fully committed to compliance and transparency, and we continue to work toward securing the necessary approvals for our planned offerings.»

The CEO believes his company, which suggests investors can see up to 8,000% returns, was targeted by agency harassment last year, he said in an interview with CoinDesk in Washington.

«They demanded from us to promise not to go public in the United States, not to ICO, not to raise funds,» he said. «So I packed my bags and moved to Europe to resume business.»

He said the election of Trump and the president’s promises to make the U.S. the global crypto capital made him come back to New York from Switzerland, with an intent to go public here.

«We thought the war was over, and we said to the SEC, ‘Hey, we’re resuming our activity,» Konanykhin said. At that point, the agency announced it intended to target the company with civil charges.

Konanykhin noted that the regulator had accused them of violating securities laws with an airdrop. Konanykhin argued that it’s a common marketing strategy seen in many crypto assets, and is «what the president of the United States is doing with his memecoin.»

«It’s embarrassing that the war on crypto still continues,» he said. If the agency continues its war on crypto by pursuing Unicoin, «I think so many observers are going to be astonished.»

Unicoin started as an effort to create a «more transparent and reliable alternative» to Bitcoin in the U.S. (which, the Unicoin website said, has returned 9 million percent to investors over the last 10 years). He said some analysts believe bitcoin was «created by Chinese intelligence, but nobody really knows by whom.»

«I’m elated by the opportunity to participate in making American the crypto capital of the planet as the president pledged he wants to do, even though it’s highly annoying to still have the legacy persecution from the SEC,» Konanykhin said.

Meanwhile, he said, «we are preparing actively for going public.»

The U.S. Congress’ opening priority for the crypto industry is to quickly finish a stablecoin oversight bill, and the House of Representatives has released the text of its version on Wednesday, following in the heels of a recent committee approval of its Senate counterpart.

The House version, introduced by Rep. Bryan Steil, who leads the House Financial Services Committee’s crypto panel, and Rep. French Hill, the Republican chair of the overall committee, governs the way companies can issue dollar-denominated digital tokens.

The new version will «close the gap» between the House efforts and the Senate version of the bill, Steil said during a conference appearance Wednesday.

The Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy (STABLE Act) «is a strong continuation of our work on digital assets in the last Congress,» Hill said in a statement.

The Senate Banking Committee had already advanced its own version of the legislation with a strong bipartisan vote, so it moves on now to consideration on the Senate floor. Rep. Tom Emmer, the House majority whip who has been among Congress’ top crypto advocates for years, said the two bills have «some minor differences that I’m sure can be ironed out.»

Read more: Trump-Tied World Liberty Financial Pitches Its Stablecoin in Washington With Don Jr.

Also on Wednesday, Emmer reintroduced his Securities Clarity Act, which seeks to define how a crypto asset might fall within the securities law framework. Emmer introduced the bill, which was part of last year’s Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT 21), alongside Democratic Representative Darren Soto.

Emmer, Steil and many other lawmakers involved in crypto efforts on Capitol Hill all appeared on Wednesday at the DC Blockchain Summit, a crypto policy event hosted by the Digital Chamber. Most of them shared hopes that the stablecoin effort would be completed by August.

As the conference wrapped up, the Senate prepared to vote for a second time on a Congressional Review Act resolution overturning the IRS’ 2024 regulation governing decentralized finance (DeFi) brokers. The Senate and House have both previously passed the resolution, which U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to sign, but the Senate must vote on it again due to a procedural rule requiring the House to vote first on tax-related issues.

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Ben Schiller.

In this issue:

Ethereum’s Final Pectra Test Goes Live

Hyperliquid Eases Token Transfers for DeFi

Celo Migration to Layer-2 Network Is Done

Bitcoin DeFi Expansion Faces Fork Dilemma

This article is featured in the latest issue of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday.

Network news

IT’S ALIVE! ETHEREUM PECTRA TEST: The final dress rehearsal for Ethereum’s upcoming Pectra upgrade occurred Wednesday, as the blockchain’s biggest changes in over a year were tested an additional time following a series of mishaps. The upgrade on the new Hoodi testnet was closely watched given that two previous tests, on the Holesky and Sepolia test networks, failed to finalize properly. Following those tests, developers created a new testnet, Hoodi, to give ecosystem players, particularly staking providers, one more testing opportunity before the Pectra upgrade hits Ethereum’s mainnet. The test involved passing Hoodi a series of code changes meant to make Ethereum more user-friendly for both end-users as well as developers. One of those changes adds smart contract functionality to wallets, allowing wallet software developers to build new convenience-oriented features, like the ability to pay transaction fees in cryptocurrencies other than ether (ETH). ​​Testnets act as copies of a main blockchain, and are used by developers to run through any major code changes in a low stakes environment, giving them a place to patch out any bugs before they reach mainnet. Hoodi was the last of three testnets to run through a simulation of Pectra. Developers previously agreed that if all went well on Wednesday, Pectra would be monitored for around 30 more days and then, finally, activated on Ethereum’s mainnet. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.

HYPERLIQUID EASES TOKENS FOR DEFI: The decentralized finance (DeFi) sector is among the biggest drivers of value accrual and revenue creation for crypto projects, but its complexity often leaves users tangled in a web of blockchains, bridges, wallets and tokens. A technical update by Hyperliquid is making that process easier for both developers and users, with the direct linking of tokens on HyperCore and HyperEVM platforms now being possible. HyperCore is its native platform for spot assets (think tokens you can trade directly), and HyperEVM, an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) network that executes smart contracts on Ethereum. Tokens on HyperCore, dubbed “Core spot,” can be linked to their counterparts on HyperEVM and are called “EVM spot.” Once linked, users can transfer them using simple actions — like a “spotSend” on HyperCore or a standard ERC-20 transfer on HyperEVM. By letting tokens move directly between them — without a third-party intermediary — developers can create products that cut out the technical chops required to move assets, which is easy for heavy crypto users, but may be challenging for beginners. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.

CELO MIGRATION to LAYER-2: The Celo blockchain’s long-awaited plan of becoming an Ethereum layer-2 chain has been completed, ending an almost two-year process, the main organizations behind the network said Wednesday. The transition ends a long journey beginning back in July 2023 for the layer-1 blockchain that included a community vote in July 2024 and a fierce competition, won by Optimism, among layer-2 networks out to convince the Celo ecosystem to build with their technology. The improved network — like other layer 2s — offers faster and cheaper transactions on top of Ethereum’s mainnet. The blockchain is powered by Optimism’s OP Stack, a customizable framework that lets developers build layer-2 networks based off of Optimism’s technology. According to Rene Reisberg, the CEO of the Celo Foundation, the migration is the first of its kind in the Ethereum ecosystem, and will probably be used as a blueprint for other EVM-compatible blockchains that are looking to become a layer-2 network. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.

BITCOIN DEFI FACES FORK DILEMMA: Bitcoin developers looking to expand the blockchain’s decentralized finance (DeFi) capabilities are likely to be considering zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, functionality that’s not currently available and which require a so-called soft fork, or new version of the software, to introduce them. That’s a problem, according Edan Yago, a Bitcoin veteran of over a decade and core contributor to smart contract operating system BitcoinOS (BOS). «Forking a blockchain, especially one with $2 trillion worth of value on it, is like open-heart surgery,» he told CoinDesk in an interview. ZK proofs are a cryptographic method of proving the validity of statements while maintaining privacy through not revealing any information about it. The functionality is not available in Bitcoin’s software, but could be made so through proposed implementations like OP_CAT and OP_CTV. Yago said developers should be able to find ways of enabling them on Bitcoin without any kind of fork. «The burden of proof is on developers to demonstrate that there is no other way of accomplishing this through clever engineering,» he said. This is what BOS hopes to achieve through the BitSNARK, a Bitcoin rollup protocol that is part of the family of computing paradigms being developed to scale the original blockchain. These emerged following the introduction of BitVM by Robin Linus in October 2023, which set out a framework for how Ethereum-like smart contracts could be enabled on Bitcoin. BitcoinOS has now open-sourced what Yago describes as a «fully production-ready» BitSNARK protocol, meaning developers now have access to ZK verification on Bitcoin and can connect it to other blockchains like Ethereum, Solana and Cardano. — Jamie Crawley Read more.

In Other News

In a two-hour interview with CoinDesk Senior Anchor Christine Lee, Strategy Executive Chair Michael Saylor discusses a U.S. Bitcoin strategic reserve, why securities holders keep him sleepless, and his own economic immortality. — Christine Lee reports.

Crypto start-up Plasma has revealed the technical features of its blockchain, which is designed for fast and efficient global stablecoin transfers, using a HotStuff-inspired consensus mechanism. — Omkar Godbole reports.

Regulatory and policy

U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), one of the leading Democrats supporting crypto legislation, warned the industry against pushing for a “watered-down” version of the long-awaited stablecoin legislation currently moving through the Senate, arguing that stringent regulations are necessary to foster innovation and protect investors from bank runs like the one on Silicon Valley Bank in 2023 and the collapse of crypto exchange FTX in 2022. — Cheyenne Ligon report.

Calendar

April 8-10: Paris Blockchain Week

April 30-May 1: Token 2049, Dubai

May 14-16: Consensus, Toronto

May 20-22: Avalanche Summit, London

May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025, Las Vegas

June 30-July 3: EthCC, Cannes

Oct. 1-2: Token2049, Singapore