Update (April 22, 5:50 am UTC): This article has been updated to include a statement from Christina Macedo.

Update (April 22, 11:14 am UTC): A correction has been made reflecting that Ready Maker (Gibraltar) Limited is not a subsidiary of US-based Ready Games.

The Supreme Court of Gibraltar has reversed its decision to freeze 542 million PLAY tokens in a court battle between two companies tied to the Web3 game-creation platform PLAY Network.

In an April 17 judgment, Gibraltar Supreme Court Judge John Restano undid his earlier February freeze of the tokens, finding it could have hurt the value of the tokens and that the evidence filed was insufficient to continue the freeze.

“Whilst there may be many reasons for the drop in value of the tokens, the evidence before the court suggests that these proceedings are a factor in that regard,” he wrote.

US-based Ready Makers, which operates as Ready Games, and its founder, David Bennahum, have filed a legal dispute against Ready Maker (Gibraltar) Limited, and its CEO, Christina Macedo. The suit claims she took over the firm and its PLAY token that is used as a reward on the PLAY Network.

Ready Games won a freeze of the tokens in February, with the Gibraltar-based Ready Maker, operating as PLAY Network, handing them over to a court-appointed custodian.

The 542 million PLAY tokens are nearly two-thirds of its current circulating supply and are worth around $2.6 million. The token’s price has plummeted by over 97% since it launched in December, according to CoinGecko.

PLAY has sunk over the past three months to trade for fractions of a cent. Source: CoinGecko

Judge Restano said the evidence filed by Ready Games for the freeze was “far from impressive, and raises more questions than it answers.”

He added he did “not consider that this is a case where the order should be re-granted in any event,” and cited Ready Games’ failure to disclose that it was in administrative dissolution at the time of filing for the token freeze, which he called “a significant omission.”

Macedo said in a statement that she saw “months of false and misleading statements made during the dispute,” and the judgment “restores clarity for our community and partners.”

Ready Games’ Bennahum told Cointelegraph that it has filed to lodge an appeal alongside “an urgent application with the Gibraltar Court of Appeal asking them to either stay the discharge of the original injunction or grant a new injunction” so the tokens could again be frozen pending the appeal’s outcome.

He added that his company disagreed with the court’s decision to lift the token freeze, saying that the Gibraltar-based firm was in an “alarming state.”

Ready Maker is just a “token launch vehicle” — Ready Games founder

Bennahum reiterated an earlier claim that the US-based Ready Games created Ready Maker in Gibraltar with the US company’s intellectual property and funding “specifically to serve as our token launch vehicle.”

“We maintain that Ms. Macedo and associated parties have wrongfully seized control of this entity and its assets,” he said. Judge Restano said in his judgment that Macedo disputed Bennahum’s claim, and regulatory filings purportedly show she is the sole controller and ultimate beneficial owner of the Gibraltar-based firm.

Related: Crypto gaming has mixed Q1 as deals jump, investment totals dip: DappRadar 

Ready Games had said in a February statement that its court action was to “recover control” of the Gibraltar company.

It added that a Delaware business court issued a temporary restraining order that required Ready Gibraltar to restore Ready Games’ access to the firm’s tech stack, such as “GitHub repositories, cloud systems, and domain accounts.”

Web3 Gamer: Riskiest, most ‘addictive’ crypto game of 2025, PIXEL goes multi-game 

Crypto markets avoided the fallout caused by US President Donald Trump’s latest salvo against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, which saw the US stock market slump and the dollar continue to weaken over uncertainty.

Stock markets across the United States ended April 21 in the red, with the S&P 500 dropping 2.4%, the tech-heavy Nasdaq slipping 2.5%, and the Dow Jones losing 2.5%, or nearly 1,000 points, according to Google Finance. 

The S&P 500 has now declined by more than 12% since the beginning of the year, and the Nasdaq is down almost 18% in the US tech stock exodus. 

US stock heatmap. Source: TradingView

The stock slide follows escalating tension between Donald Trump and Jerome Powell and growing concern over the impact of trade tariffs. 

“‘Preemptive Cuts’ in Interest Rates are being called for by many,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social on April 21. 

“With Energy Costs way down, food prices […] substantially lower, and most other ‘things’ trending down, there is virtually No Inflation,” he added. 

Trump has reiterated his call for lowering interest rates, which Powell, who has been labelled as “Mr. Too Late” and a “major loser” by the POTUS, has kept high at 4.5%. 

Source: Donald Trump

Last week, Powell took a swipe at Trump’s trade tariffs, saying they could lead to a dangerous economic mix of rising prices and slowing growth, or “stagflation.”

Trump responded with a call to fire the central bank chair, stating at the time that his “termination cannot come fast enough.”  

The Fed is expected to maintain its wait-and-see policy approach at its May 7 meeting, with interest rate markets predicting just a 13% chance of a rate cut, according to CME Fed Watch.

US dollar devaluation continues 

The US Dollar Index (DXY) — a measure of the strength of the greenback against a basket of leading currencies — has also slipped more than 10% so far this year. This week it fell to a three-year low below 98 on April 21, according to TradingView. 

“Everyone needs and wants a weaker dollar to service their dollar debts,” commented Real Vision founder and CEO Raoul Pal on April 22. “This is the purest form of global liquidity and is the largest driver of global M2 [money supply] currently,” he added.  

Related: US dollar goes ‘no-bid’ — 5 things to know in Bitcoin this week 

Meanwhile, crypto markets have held on to weekend gains with total capitalization remaining at $2.83 trillion at the time of writing. 

Bitcoin (BTC) is keeping digital asset markets buoyed, hitting a four-week high of $88,500 on April 22. 

“Amid one of the most turbulent periods for global markets in years, Bitcoin is showing impressive resilience,” commented Bitfinex analysts in a recent market update. 

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Indian crypto exchange WazirX, which was hacked for $234 million last July, says it is on track to restart its operations pending a May 13 court decision on its restructuring proposal and user compensation plan. 

If Singapore’s High Court gives the nod, WazirX parent company Zettai PTE Ltd can restart the exchange and begin its compensation scheme for affected users within 10 business days, WazirX said in an April 21 update to X.

WazirX lost $234 million of crypto from a Safe Multisig wallet mid-July 2024 in an attack since attributed to North Korean hackers, forcing them to temporarily pause all crypto and Indian rupee withdrawals on the platform.

Source: WazirX

“Zettai has completed all prior required steps, and the next key step is the sanction hearing, which the Singapore High Court has scheduled for May 13, 2025,” the firm said.

“This hearing is essential for the Scheme to become legally effective. While we’ve worked to stay aligned with the previously shared timelines, court proceedings operate independently, and we respect that process.”

On April 7, more than 90% of the voting creditors voted in favor of the platform’s post-hack restructuring plan, which involved the issuance of recovery tokens.

The tokens would be repurchased using net profits from the exchange and could yield 75% to 80% of users’ account balances at the time of the cyberattack.

WazirX had warned that repayments from the $235 million hack could be delayed until 2030 if creditors didn’t approve its proposed restructuring plan. 

Singapore’s High Court gave Zettai permission to convene a creditors’ meeting to propose a possible remedy for users and a plan to get the exchange back online in January.

Related: Bybit CEO: Two-thirds of Lazarus-hacked funds remain traceable

“We understand the eagerness around the platform restart and truly appreciate your continued patience,” WazirX said.

“Since the beginning, we have communicated that the first distribution and restart would occur within the April-May 2025 window.”

Supreme Court of India dismisses WazirX users petition 

A separate April 16 court judgment from the Supreme Court of India dismissed a petition filed by 54 victims of the hack, who sought legal action against WazirX, Shetty, Binance and custody provider Liminal. Petitioners also asked the court to audit WazirX’s accounts.  

Justices B.R. Gavai and Augustine Masih rejected the petition, saying the court could not rule on the case because it was a matter of crypto policy, which the court doesn’t have the authority to rule on. 

Gavai and Masih advised the petitioners to approach a regulatory body or other relevant authority to hear the matter instead.

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Mantra founder and CEO John Patrick Mullin has started unstaking 150 million of his Mantra (OM) tokens in preparation for sending them to a burn address in an attempt to restore the token’s value by tightening supply. 

Mantra announced on April 21 that the unstaking process had begun, and would be completed by April 29, at which point Mullin’s Mantra (OM) tokens will be sent to the burn address and permanently removed from circulating supply.

Source: John Patrick Mullin

Mullin said it was a “first step in rebuilding trust with the community, but far from the last.” 

Mantra said it was also in talks with “key ecosystem partners” about burning a further 150 million OM to bring the total burn amount to 300 million.

With 150 million fewer OM, Mantra’s total supply will decline to 1.67 billion, and its number of staked tokens will drop by over 26% from 571.8 million OM to 421.8 million OM. 

Returns will also be boosted: “This strategic burn will lower the bonded ratio from 31.47% to 25.30%, resulting in an increase in staking APR,” Mantra said.

Token burn initiative follows OM price collapse

Two days after Mantra’s rapid 90% price collapse on April 13, Mullins posted to X that he intended to burn all of the staked tokens he was allocated at the blockchain’s mainnet genesis in October. These vested “team tokens” were due to be unlocked starting in 2027.

He also ran a poll on X about the proposed burn of his tokens, with alternate options such as extended vesting or unlocking tokens at milestones — as a “temperature check of people’s thoughts.”

The poll had attracted almost 9,000 votes at the time of writing, and a number of commenters criticized it as an attempt to reverse course on the burn commitment. 

Source: John Patrick Mullin

The burn is connected to an “OM Token support plan” Mantra announced following the price crash, which will also feature a token buyback. Mullin said the buyback program was also “well underway.”

Related: How Mantra’s OM token collapsed in 24 hours of chaos

Mantra also released a tokenomics dashboard to increase transparency as it seeks to regain the trust of the community. 

At the time of writing, the OM price remains down around 90% from its value of $6.30 earlier in April, trading at below $0.55.

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A governance token for the Reserve Protocol stablecoin, launched by a firm previously advised by sworn-in SEC Chair Paul Atkins, has surged over 13% after crypto exchange Coinbase announced that it will list the token. 

Atkins was an early adviser for the stablecoin firm around the time it launched in 2019, according to Reserve Protocol’s CEO Nevin Freeman. He is no longer consulting at the firm.

The Reserve Rights (RSR) token is the governance token aimed at ensuring the stability of the Reserve Protocol’s stablecoin, Reserve Dollar (RSV). 

In an April 21 X post, Coinbase said it would list the RSR token on the Ethereum layer-2 network Base on April 22 at 9 am Pacific Time (4 pm UTC).

Source: Coinbase AssetsAtkins news bumps up RSR’s price even further

The Coinbase listing, combined with the news of Atkins officially being sworn in as SEC chair on April 21, pushed the token up 13.6% to a near two-month high of $0.00835 on April 22, CoinGecko data shows. Prior to Atkins being sworn in, RSR had already risen double digits to around $0.0081.

It is currently the 143rd largest coin by market capitalization at $464 million.

Atkins said he will be focused on ensuring the US is the “best and most secure place in the world to invest and do business,” while ensuring sufficient consumer protection measures are in place.

It comes two weeks after the Senate confirmed Atkins as SEC chair in a 52-44 vote on April 9. 

Related: Crypto in a bear market, rebound likely in Q3 — Coinbase

Atkins takes over from Mark Uyeda, who has been the SEC’s acting chair since Jan. 20, when former chair Gary Gensler stepped down.

Since US President Donald Trump returned to office, the SEC created a Crypto Task Force to consult with the industry on regulation and dropped several crypto-related investigations and enforcement actions undertaken by the Gensler-led SEC.

Atkins is expected to take a more crypto-friendly approach, telling a Senate confirmation hearing in March that a priority of his at the SEC would be to provide a firm regulatory foundation for crypto assets through a “rational, coherent and principled approach.”

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Update: April 22 at 12:35am UTC: This story has been updated to include more details of Paul Atkins being sworn in as the SEC’s chair.

Paul Atkins has officially been sworn in as the 34th chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The April 21 announcement comes nearly two weeks after Atkins’ position was confirmed by the US Senate in a 52-44 vote on April 9.

“I am honored by the trust and confidence President Trump and the Senate have placed in me to lead the SEC,” said Atkins, who served as an SEC commissioner between 2002 and 2008.

“As I return to the SEC, I am pleased to join with my fellow Commissioners and the agency’s dedicated professionals to advance its mission to facilitate capital formation; maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets; and protect investors.”

”Together we will work to ensure that the U.S. is the best and most secure place in the world to invest and do business.”

Atkins is widely expected to lead a more crypto-friendly SEC than former chair Gary Gensler under the Biden administration.

Source: Cointelegraph

His confirmation was reportedly delayed due to several financial disclosures that he needed to file as a result of marrying into a billionaire family. Some of those financial disclosures reportedly included up to $6 million worth of crypto-related investments, including crypto custody platform Anchorage Digital and blockchain tokenization platform Securitize.Atkins has taken over from acting chair Mark Uyeda, who helped the SEC establish a Crypto Task Force in January, aimed at strengthening rapport between the commission and industry players.The SEC has also dismissed several crypto probes and enforcement actions undertaken by the Gensler-led SEC in recent months, including cases involving Coinbase, Consensys, Gemini and Uniswap.Related: Crypto industry is not experiencing regulatory capture — Attorney

The Atkins-led SEC currently has over 70 crypto-related exchange-traded fund applications to decide on this year, Bloomberg reported on April 21.“Everything from XRP, Litecoin and Solana to Penguins, Doge and 2x Melania and everything in between,” Bloomberg ETF analyst James Balchunas said in an X post. “Gonna be a wild year.”The recent surge in crypto ETF filings reflects a “spaghetti cannon approach” from issuers testing which products the new SEC leadership might approve, fellow Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart said in February.

“Issuers will try to launch many many different things and see what sticks,” Seyffart said.Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered

A member of the House of Representatives has proposed legislation aimed at stopping investors from using the US territory of Puerto Rico as a crypto tax haven.

According to an April 21 Bloomberg report, New York Representative Nydia Velázquez introduced the Fair Taxation of Digital Assets in Puerto Rico Act, a bill that could change existing laws in the territory to require certain investors to pay local and federal taxes on capital gains, including from digital assets. The legislation would reportedly add text to Puerto Rico’s Internal Revenue Code, making income from cryptocurrencies subject to federal tax laws.

“This wave of crypto investors hasn’t helped Puerto Rico’s recovery or strengthened the local economy,” said Rep. Velázquez, according to Bloomberg. “Instead, it’s driven up housing costs, pushed out local residents, and added pressure to an island where nearly 40% of people live in poverty — all while costing the federal government billions in lost tax revenue.”

Puerto Rico is well known as a tax haven for many people in the crypto industry since the territory began allowing exemptions in 2012 under Act 20 and Act 22 of the Tax Incentives Code — later consolidated as Act 60. The island has attracted investors, including Pantera Capital founder Dan Morehead, venture capitalist Brock Pierce, and online influencer Logan Paul.

Related: NFT trader faces prison for $13M tax fraud on CryptoPunk profits

Missing out on crypto tax revenue

Rep. Velazquez’s office reportedly said Puerto Rico could lose roughly $4.5 billion in revenue from 2020 to 2026 due to the tax incentives in place. In contrast, Puerto Rico Governor Jenniffer González-Colón proposed extending Act 60, set to expire in 2035, to the end of 2055, but requiring applicants to be subject to a 4% capital gains tax rate, smaller than the typical range up to 37% in the US.

It’s unclear whether the legislation proposed by Rep. Velazquez, a Democrat, would have enough political support to pass in the Republican-controlled House or Senate. Both chambers will likely consider floor votes for stablecoin legislation and a crypto regulatory framework in the coming months.

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Coinbase has listed futures contracts for the XRP token on its US derivatives exchange, the cryptocurrency platform said on April 21.

The contracts are overseen by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and offer traders “a regulated, capital-efficient way to gain exposure to one of the most liquid digital assets,” the company said in a post on the X platform.

Coinbase’s XRP (XRP) futures include standard contracts representing 10,000 XRP and retail-oriented “nano” contracts representing 500 XRP each, or approximately $1,000 as of April 21, according to regulatory filings.  

The contracts are the latest crypto futures to launch on Coinbase’s derivatives exchange, which also features Solana (SOL) and Hedera (HBAR) futures contracts, both added in February. 

Source: Coinbase

Related: Coinbase in talks to buy derivatives exchange Deribit: Report

Burgeoning market segment

Since 2024, US exchanges — including Coinbase, Robinhood and Chicago Mercantile Exchange — have been expanding crypto futures offerings in response to strong demand from retail and institutional investors. 

Futures contracts are standardized agreements to buy or sell an underlying asset at a future date. They are popular for hedging and speculation because they let traders take long and short positions, often with leverage. 

Coinbase lists derivatives tied to some 92 different assets on its international exchange and approximately two dozen in the US, according to its website. 

Its US-traded products include contracts tied to memecoins, such as Dogecoin (DOGE), and commodities, such as oil and gold. 

Coinbase’s stock performance vs. the S&P 500. Source: JPMorgan

In December, Coinbase said derivatives trading volumes soared roughly 10,950% in 2024. The exchange is reportedly in talks to buy Deribit in a bid to expand its derivatives footprint.

Coinbase launched its US derivatives exchange in 2022, bringing cryptocurrency futures — including retail-oriented “nano” contracts — to tens of millions of US users.

Launched in 2012, XRP Ledger is among the oldest blockchain networks and specializes in payments and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications for institutions. 

As of April 21, XRP’s market capitalization stands at approximately $120 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. 

In March, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dropped a years-long lawsuit against XRP Ledger’s developer, Ripple, for alleged securities law violations.

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Astra Fintech, a global blockchain payments provider, has launched a $100 million fund to support the Solana ecosystem’s growth throughout Asia, according to an April 21 announcement.

Through the fund, Astra Fintech plans to deploy capital to accelerate projects and form partnerships with developers, companies, and regulators. The fund’s base of operations will be in South Korea, a country Solana’s venture arm invested in after the collapse of the Terra ecosystem in 2022.

The fund will focus on projects and developers working on PayFi solutions — a conglomeration of systems that use blockchain technology to facilitate payments. Astra’s main suite of products attempts to blend traditional finance with digital currencies.

According to data from Electric Capital, Solana and Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) blockchains are currently within the top 10 blockchains for developer activity, only behind Ethereum.

In 2021, Solana created a $5 million development fund to spur projects in Southeast Asia. The region is a hotspot for Web3 games, a crypto use case that has proliferated on Solana due to the blockchain’s fast speeds and low transaction costs.

Solana, with its ups and downs

The Solana ecosystem has had quite the ride in 2025. Its native token, Solana (SOL), rose to an all-time high of $293.31 on Jan. 19, two days after US incoming President Donald Trump launched a memecoin on the network. It trades at $136.61 at this writing, a fall of 53.4% since then.

However, crypto executives and companies continue betting on the Solana ecosystem. On April 7, a group of former Kraken executives acquired Janover, aiming to transform the real estate firm into a de facto Solana treasury. Just weeks later, Upexi — a brand management and supply chain company — saw its shares surge 630% on April 21 after announcing a similar strategy. Meanwhile, Canada approved SOL staking in early April, and ARK Invest has since added exposure to Solana funds through its tech-focused ETFs.

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A group of investors has filed a class-action lawsuit against decentralized cryptocurrency exchange Meteora, alleging the firm was involved in manipulating the launch and market price of the M3M3 token.

In an amended complaint filed on April 21 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the plaintiffs allege that venture capital firm Kelsier Labs, Meteora, and four current or former executives “intentionally misrepresented” information in the M3M3 launch in December 2024.

The investors claimed that they suffered at least $69 million in losses between December 2024 and February 2025 after the parties presented “trusted leaders in the Solana ecosystem” as being behind the token launch, rather than a “blatant fraud” in which sales were manipulated to artificially inflate the price.

“This artificially-inflated valuation communicated highly misleading information to non-insider investors, who reasonably relied on Defendants’ representations that the $M3M3 launch was fully accessible to the public and conducted in a transparent manner fair to non-insider investors, and thus reasonably relied on $M3M3 market price as a meaningful measure of its value,” the complaint reads. “The post-launch price spike also served to corroborate Defendants’ aggressively-marketed, but misleading, assertions that $M3M3 had intrinsic value and a comparatively low risk profile.”

Class-action lawsuit against Meteora, Kelsier Labs, and current and former executives. Source: PACER

The lawsuit is one of many involving different crypto firms that have alleged fraud through violations of US securities laws. Though the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), under acting chair Mark Uyeda since US President Donald Trump took office, has scaled back or dismissed many enforcement actions involving digital assets, the agency said in February it still intended to pursue cases against fraudulent token projects.

The investors added:

“Together, Defendants designed the $M3M3 Token and planned its launch on Meteora in a manner intended to illicitly enrich themselves at the expense of the unsuspecting investing public.”

Related: Meteora says co-founder’s X account hacked after ‘parasitic’ memecoin post

Memecoins in the Solana ecosystem

Meteora has been tied to the launch of several high-profile yet controversial tokens, including those for Trump (TRUMP), his wife Melania (MELANIA), Libra (LIBRA), and online influencer Haliey Welch (HAWK).

According to the lawsuit, the firm “purported to offer a comprehensive solution to the problems in the memecoin investment market” with the launch of M3M3. The defendants in the case allegedly attempted to distinguish the token from other notable memecoins by highlighting the “legitimacy and trustworthiness” through the involvement of Meteora co-founder Ben Chow and the platform.

Kelsier Ventures, KIP Protocol, and Meteora face a similar class-action lawsuit filed in New York in March over LIBRA allegedly being launched in a “deceptive, manipulative and fundamentally unfair” manner. Argentine President Javier Milei briefly promoted the token over social media after his sister reportedly received payments from the project.

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