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Utah One Vote Away, But Some States Fail to Break Through on Crypto Stakes

This year’s rapid surge in U.S. states’ interest to put public money into cryptocurrencies before the federal government can establish a strategic reserve of digital assets has encountered mixed results after five such efforts flamed out, though Utah remains a single vote away from the finish line and Texas reportedly advanced a bill to its state Senate.
Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota have fallen short of the mark in legislative efforts to put public money into crypto. Others — most notably Utah — have made significant progress toward passing bills that could tie their financial health to the digital assets markets, and the ground is shifting by the hour.
The U.S. Congress and President Donald Trump have made noise about a federal strategic digital assets reserve, with the idea’s public campaign stemming from the Bitcoin 2024 stage in Nashville, Tennessee, back before Trump won his election and Republicans rose to the majorities in Congress. Trump has spoken broadly in favor of the notion, which has also been more aggressively advocated by MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor and pitched by Senator Cynthia Lummis, the Wyoming Republican who helms the crypto subcommittee of the Senate Banking Committee.
Many of the states raced to beat the feds to the punch, but in the weeks that have marked this trend, the market value of the asset most of the efforts are talking about — bitcoin (BTC) — has slipped considerably from the post-election euphoria that seemed to spur enthusiasm.
Read More: U.S. Bitcoin Reserve May Be Coming, But States Are Winning the Race
The drop in price to about $86,000 from a Trump inauguration-day high of $106,000 has been coupled with another high-profile exchange hack at Bybit that reportedly made off with more crypto than thieves have ever previously snatched in one outing. These setbacks may have further dampened the goodwill of state-government enthusiasts.
«That sense of urgency appears to have abated now,» said Johnny Garcia, a managing director at VeChain Foundation who has been following the state actions. «My view is states have some breathing room to assess and to contemplate a way forward.»
Montana and North Dakota saw clear losses when their legislatures considered the idea of state-level crypto reserves. Both legislatures voted to reject the bills. The other three states where the initiatives failed saw those rejections happen at the committee level.
Meanwhile, Utah’s legislation to allow the crypto investment of up to 5% of certain public accounts has cleared the state house and a senate committee on its way to consideration by the entire senate there. But getting that vote is never a certainty in the limited windows most states give to their legislative activity.
«Although Utah seems best positioned to finalize its bill first, nothing is guaranteed,» said Dennis Porter, CEO of the Satoshi Action Fund that’s pushed for states to embrace bitcoin reserves. «It’s a dynamic process.»
Porter said the campaign in the states is leaning on them as the «laboratory of democracy.» He posted on social-media site X (formerly Twitter) that most of the bills will fail, which is «normal» for the process, which his group will continue pursuing each year.
Texas, a major bitcoin mining hub, reportedly became the latest state legislature to move a crypto reserve bill out of committee. But the states have pursued such a wide variety of digital assets initiatives that they’re difficult to pin down as a common effort. And some states are moving on other aspects of crypto involvement, such as Indiana’s house-passed bill weighing blockchain for government efficiency and Arizona advancing a technical bill through its house that would keep unclaimed property in crypto form, rather than converting it to cash — an outcome that would involve managing it in a state fund.
While North Dakota’s effort to set up a reserve failed, the state house also approved a separate resolution that encourages its treasurer to invest certain state funds in digital assets. That resolution is now in the hands of the state senate.
Garcia predicted that «many of these states will likely authorize digital assets as part of their state pension and investment options before moving toward more aggressive digital asset reserves.»
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Canary Capital Files for Tron ETF With Staking Capabilities

Canary Capital is looking to launch an exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking the price of Tron’s native token, TRX, according to a filing.
The hedge fund submitted a Form S-1 for the Canary Staked TRX ETF with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday. As the name suggests, the fund — if approved — would stake portions of its holdings.
This would be done through third-party providers, with BitGo acting as custodian for the assets. The fund would track TRX’s spot price using CoinDesk Indices calculations.
A proposed ticker as well as the management fee for the product have not been shared yet.
Issuers had initially filed applications for spot ethereum (ETH) ETFs with the staking feature included but removed them in an amended filing later in order to receive approval from the SEC on their proposals.
While the SEC under former Chair Gary Gensler was strictly against staking, issuers have grown more hopeful that they will be able to add the feature to their spot ether funds, among others, with the appointment of crypto-friendly Chair Paul Atkins.
A decision on a February request from Grayscale to allow staking in the Grayscale Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHE) and the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust ETF (ETH) was postponed by the regulator just a few days ago.
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Feds Mistakenly Order Estonian HashFlare Fraudsters to Self-Deport Ahead of Sentencing

Just four months ahead of their criminal sentencing for operating a $577 million cryptocurrency mining Ponzi scheme, the two Estonian founders of HashFlare were seemingly mistakenly ordered to self-deport by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — an instruction that directly contradicted a court order for the men to remain in Washington state until they are sentenced in August.
In a joint letter to the court last week, lawyers for Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin told District Judge Robert Lasnik of the Western District of Washington that both men had received “disturbing communications” from DHS ordering them to leave the country immediately.
“It is time for you to leave the United States,” an email to Potapenko and Turogin dated April 11 read. “DHS is terminating your parole. Do not attempt to remain in the United States — the federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately.”
The email, included with the letter filed last week, threatened both men with “criminal prosecution, civil fines, and penalties and any other lawful options available to the federal government” if they stayed in the country. It resembles emails that undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens alike have received over the past few days.
Ironically, Potapenko and Turogin are not in the U.S. of their own volition — they were extradited from their native Estonia at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice in 2022 on an 18-count indictment tied to their HashFlare scheme. Though they initially pleaded not guilty to all charges, in February they both pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and agreed to forfeit over $400 million in assets. They have both been in the Seattle area on bond since last July.
“Although there is nothing Ivan and Sergei would want more than to immediately go home, they understood that they are also under Court order to remain in King County,” wrote Mark Bini, a partner at Reed Smith LLP and lead counsel for Potenko, wrote in the pair’s joint letter to the court. Bini did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.
In his letter, Bini said DHS’s emails had caused both Potapenko and Turogin «significant anxiety.”
“We and our clients have all seen recent news. Immigration authorities make mistakes, and individuals who should not be in custody end up in custody, sometimes even deported to places where they should not be deported,” Bini wrote.
Six days after Bini’s letter to the judge, the DOJ filed its own letter with the court saying that prosecutors had coordinated with DHS’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division and secured a year-long deferral to the self-deportation order.
“This should provide ample time for the sentencing to take place,” the prosecution’s letter said.
DHS did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.
Potapenko and Turogin are slated to be sentenced on August 14 in Seattle. Their lawyers have said that they will request to be sentenced to time served, meaning no additional time in prison, and to be sent home to Estonia “immediately.”
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CoinDesk Weekly Recap: EigenLayer, Kraken, Coinbase, AWS

Following last week’s tariff-caused drama, this was a relatively quiet week in crypto. Bitcoin remained stable around $84k. The CoinDesk 20, which tracks about 80% of the market, was up about 4% in the last seven days — i.e. nothing historic.
Still, plenty happened. On Tuesday, much of crypto went offline because of a tech issue at AWS, showing how the decentralized economy isn’t always that decentralized. Shaurya Malwa reported the news early. Bitcoin and other major cryptos slipped on bad news for Nvidia, Omkar Godbole reported.
Mantra, a project focused on real world assets, lost 90% of its value. Explanations varied (the company said it was due to “force liquidations” exchanges).
Meanwhile, EigenLayer, a restaking leader, rolled out a “slashing” feature meant to address security concerns (Sam Kessler reported). OKX, a major exchange, announced plans to set up in California following a $500 million settlement with the SEC over claims it operated previously in the U.S. without a money transmitter license. Cheyenne Ligon had that story.
In less good news, Kraken laid off “hundreds” of staff ahead of an expected IPO. And Coinbase became embroiled in a “front running controversy” linked to a curiously named token on its Base L2. Privacy advocates reacted with alarm to rumors that Binance was about to delist Zcash following a long decline in the value of privacy coins.
In D.C. news, Jesse Hamilton reported on a new wave of crypto lobbyists flooding the capital. Some asked if there are now too many trade groups and whether they really all could be effective.
Friends With Benefits, a buzzy social club for creative technologists, launched a new program to build Web3 products for music, film, publishing and other fun activities. (I wrote that one.)
Of course, there was plenty happening in the economy and markets (Trump’s disgust for Fed chair Powell fed into the unease). But, in crypto, it was pretty much business as usual. Fortunes won, fortunes lost, fortunes deferred.
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