Meanwhile, a startup offering life insurance and annuities denominated in bitcoin (BTC), raised $40 million in series A funding round, CEO Zac Townsend said on Thursday in an X post.

The investment was led by venture capital firms Framework and Fulgur Ventures, with early Bitcoin-advocate Wences Casares also participating.

Traditional life insurance pays out in fiat currencies. Meanwhile flips this model, keeping premiums and benefits in bitcoin, aiming to help policyholders guard against inflation and currency devaluation. In countries where local currencies lose value, holding policies in BTC could help preserve purchasing power for future payouts. However, policyholders also take on bitcoin’s price volatility.

Read more: Crypto for Advisors: Bitcoin Inheritance Strategies

The firm plans to use the funds to accelerate its global rollout, targeting regions where inflation and currency instability are everyday concerns, Townsend said. Meanwhile did not disclose its current valuation or specific market entry plans in the announcement.

«This round gives us significant capital to power our journey of building the world’s largest long-term insurance and savings company,» Townsend said.

The investment follows on an earlier, $20 million round from a range of investors including Sam Altman, CEO of artificial intelligence firm OpenAI, alongside Google’s AI-focused fund Gradient Ventures. The company secured a digital life insurer license in Bermuda last year.

As risk assets including cryptocurrencies struggled on Thursday amid tariff uncertainties, tokenized gold once again emerged as an outperformer in the carnage.

The market capitalization of gold-backed tokens swelled to just under $2 billion on Wednesday, up 5.7% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data. The rise coincided with the yellow metal briefly touching a fresh all-time above $3,170/oz, TradingView shows.

Alongside the price rally, gold tokens experienced a frenzy of activity and demand over the past weeks, fueled by the broader market turmoil. Weekly tokenized gold trading volume surpassed $1 billion, the highest since the U.S. banking turmoil of March 2023, according to a report by digital asset platform CEX.IO.

The two largest tokens, Paxos Gold (PAXG), Tether Gold (XAUT), making up the bulk of the tokenized gold market, saw their weekly trading volumes surging over 900% and 300%, respectively, since January 20, according to the report citing CoinGecko data. PAXG also experienced continuous inflows totalling $63 million during this period, DefiLlama data shows.

The rally tracks the broader gains in physical gold, which posted double-digit increases in 2025 amid geopolitical uncertainty and inflation concerns. However, even gold wasn’t spared during the market-wide sell-off triggered by U.S. tariffs, with prices briefly dropping 6% before quickly recovering to record highs.

Since Trump’s inauguration, tokenized gold has been one of crypto’s top performing sectors, with its market cap up 21%, the report noted. By contrast, stablecoins gained a more modest 8% in market cap, while bitcoin declined 19% and the total crypto market lost 26%.

“Tokenized gold is emerging as one of the key diversification strategies among crypto-native users, alongside bitcoin,» wrote Alexandr Kerya, VP of product management at CEX.IO. «It provides a safer and more stable approach to portfolio management, enabling users to stay within the crypto ecosystem while benefiting from the value and stability of the underlying physical asset.”

«At the same time, the broader RWA narrative helps make gold exposure more accessible and intuitive for users who may not have considered it before,» Kerya added.

Disclaimer: This article, or parts of it, was generated with assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

NEW YORK, NY — A recent U.S. Department of Justice staff memo dismantling the DOJ’s crypto unit and narrowing the scope of its crypto-related enforcement priorities will have no impact on the prosecution of Terraform Labs co-founder and former CEO Do Kwon, prosecutors said Thursday.

The memo, sent Monday evening by U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, informed staff that the DOJ would no longer be pursuing prosecution against crypto exchanges, mixing services, or offline wallets for the acts of their end users. Blanche told staff not to criminally charge any violations of federal securities or commodities laws, except under specific circumstances, in cases where the charges would “require the [DOJ] to litigate whether a digital asset is a ‘security’ or a ‘commodity’” and there is an adequate alternative criminal charge.

During a hearing on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) asked prosecutors whether Blanche’s memo would have any impact on the charges against Kwon, which include two counts of commodities fraud and two counts of securities fraud, as well as five other charges including wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud.

The prosecution told Engelmayer that they have “no plans” to change their charges against Kwon at this time.

David Patton, Kwon’s lead attorney and a partner at Hecker Fink LLP, told Engelmayer that the contents of Blanche’s memo could — at least indirectly — lead to some pre-trial motions from the defense.

“I do think it could potentially be the subject of some pre-trial motions,” Patton said. “It may or may not be directly related to the memo.” Patton specified that the questions of whether the cryptocurrencies involved in the case were securities or not could be relevant.

In a separate civil case brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Kwon and Terraform Labs last year, in which Kwon and his company were found to be liable for fraud, another SDNY judge found that the tokens involved in the case were, in fact, securities.

During Thursday’s hearing, Engelmayer told both the prosecution and the defense to inform him well in advance of the trial if they planned to request that he adhere to any of the rulings or findings made by the court in the SEC case.

The next batch of pre-trial motions are expected to hit the docket in July, and a third status conference has been scheduled for June 12 at 11 a.m. in New York.

Due to scheduling challenges, the start date for Kwon’s criminal trial has been pushed back three weeks from January 26, 2026 to February 17, 2026.

Read more: Do Kwon’s Criminal Trial Set for 2026 as Lawyers Deal With ‘Massive’ Trove of Evidence