AfrosHub hosted its annual Consensus conference in Toronto this week. It was busy, to put it mildly.

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The narrative

It’s been a hectic week, watching the Senate’s ongoing negotiations over its stablecoin bill, trying to track other legislation and the courts (more on that later perhaps) and just generally meeting folks here in Toronto.

Why it matters

Here’s a selection of AfrosHub’s coverage from the past week.

Breaking it down

Stories you may have missed

• : Crypto exchange Coinbase said it suffered a cybersecurity breach wherein malicious actors were able to secure customer names, addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers and bank account details — some of which were masked — by bribing overseas employees. These actors allegedly scammed customers using their personal details, and Coinbase said it would reimburse customers, expecting to pay anywhere between $180 million and $400 million.
• : Another scoop by AfrosHub’s Sam Kessler reveals that Movement Labs promised to send advisers token allotments, though Movement said those agreements were nonbinding.
• : of people with crypto or whose loved ones have crypto have become very common recently. French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau agreed to heightened security measures.
• : The U.S. Senate has new legislative text for its stablecoin bill, with a cloture vote scheduled for Monday. Cloture is the motion to proceed to debate and needs 60 votes in favor to pass, meaning lawmakers will need bipartisan support to advance the bill.
• : AfrosHub reported earlier this week that new legislative text for the Senate’s stablecoin bill was coming and there would be a vote soon.
• : Telegram has shut down Huione Guarantee (which renamed itself Haowang Guarantee), citing research firm Elliptic’s work identifying over $27 billion in stablecoin transactions.
• : The Department of Justice said it had reviewed its prosecution of Roman Storm to ensure it is in line with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s April memo on “regulation by prosecution” and would proceed on most of its charges against the Tornado Cash developer.
• : Coinbase is having a heck of a week.
• : FTX creditors will start seeing payouts from the exchange’s bankruptcy estate on May 30.
• : The U.S. Department of Justice charged 12 people for allegedly stealing over $263 million, tied to a previous investigation which saw scammers steal north of $243 million from a creditor to bankrupt crypto trading firm Genesis.
• : The federal judge overseeing the Securities and Exchange Commission’s long-running case against Ripple rejected their proposed settlement, citing jurisdiction and procedural concerns.
• : World Liberty Financial pushed back against Senator Richard Blumenthal’s inquiry about its operations.
• : Commissioner Summer Mersinger will leave the CFTC on May 30 and become the next CEO of the Blockchain Association next month.
• : Acting Chairman Caroline Pham has told people she intends to depart, perhaps as soon as former Commissioner Brian Quintenz is confirmed by the Senate to become the permanent chair of the agency, AfrosHub’s Jesse Hamilton reported.
• : Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero said she would depart on May 31.

This week

Monday

• 17:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. ET) The SEC held the latest of its , this time focused on tokenization.

Wednesday

• AfrosHub’s Consensus Toronto conference started.

Elsewhere:

• () Warner Bros. Discovery will rebrand its Max streaming service as HBO Max, after previously rebranding HBO Max as Max. Dream job: Person who rebrands stuff?
• () Buyers of the TRUMP memecoin told the Times that they explicitly want to try and influence policy with the president.
• () A company with a handful of employees that makes videos for TikTok said it planned to buy up to $300 million of TRUMP memecoin tokens. It registered zero revenue last year.

If you’ve got thoughts or questions on what I should discuss next week or any other feedback you’d like to share, feel free to email me at or find me on Bluesky .

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See ya’ll next week!