Crypto exchange Backpack has initiated the first phase of the claims process for former FTX users in Europe.

According to an April 1 announcement, users will need to create an account on the exchange, submit Know Your Customer information, and connect it to their FTX EU claim account.

Backpack has not set a deadline for this phase of the claims process and has yet to provide a timeline for when distributions will begin. Users will face a withdrawal fee of €5 ($5.39) for claims under €2,000 ($2,158) and 0.25% for amounts above it.

Source: Armani Ferrante

Backpack acquired FTX EU in January 2025 to offer crypto derivatives, including perpetual futures, throughout Europe. The acquisition marked the end of a lengthy battle to buy the European arm of the bankrupt exchange.

Backpack CEO Armani Ferrante said at the time of the acquisition that the company was committed to returning FTX EU funds as fast and as safely as possible.

FTX creditor activist Sunil Kavuri told Cointelegraph in January 2025 that the sale of FTX EU to Backpack added “further confusion and nervousness among FTX EU customers and the repayment of their funds.”

“Some FTX EU customers signed up to these distributors, and they are confused about who will be distributing their funds back to them — Backpack, Kraken or Bitgo,” Kavuri said at the time.

Related: FTX’s 2-year repayment delay is a ‘win,’ claims trader who predicted FTX’s collapse

Details on the first part of the claims process

For distribution amounts, the FAQ page on Backpack’s website states that all positions were closed using market prices at the time the exchange was shut down, and each was settled in euros.

Furthermore, users with pending cryptocurrency withdrawals on Nov. 11, 2022, should have filed a claim in FTX’s US bankruptcy proceedings. Such users may be eligible to receive distributions from the FTX Recovery Trust, which Backpack is not involved with.

Additionally, EU residents who signed up for FTX before March 7, 2022, are not considered FTX EU customers and should file their claims with FTX International, not Backpack.

FTX Estate’s next round of distributions on May 30

FTX Digital Markets, separate from FTX EU, distributed its first round of reimbursements on Feb. 18, with exchanges BitGo and Kraken facilitating the distributions. That first round of reimbursements went to “Convenience Class” members, those with claims under $50,000. 

The next round of reimbursements tied to FTX’s US bankruptcy proceedings is set to go out on May 30 and includes creditors under Class 5 Customer Entitlement Claims and Class 6 General Unsecured Claims. FTX is expected to use $11.4 billion to make the payments

Magazine: The $2,500 doco about FTX collapse on Amazon Prime… with help from mom

Crypto exchange Backpack has initiated the first phase of the claims process for former FTX users in Europe.

According to an April 1 announcement, users will need to create an account on the exchange, submit Know Your Customer information, and connect it to their FTX EU claim account.

Backpack has not set a deadline for this phase of the claims process and has yet to provide a timeline for when distributions will begin. Users will face a withdrawal fee of €5 ($5.39) for claims under €2,000 ($2,158) and 0.25% for amounts above it.

Source: Armani Ferrante

Backpack acquired FTX EU in January 2025 to offer crypto derivatives, including perpetual futures, throughout Europe. The acquisition marked the end of a lengthy battle to buy the European arm of the bankrupt exchange.

Backpack CEO Armani Ferrante said at the time of the acquisition that the company was committed to returning FTX EU funds as fast and as safely as possible.

FTX creditor activist Sunil Kavuri told Cointelegraph in January 2025 that the sale of FTX EU to Backpack added “further confusion and nervousness among FTX EU customers and the repayment of their funds.”

“Some FTX EU customers signed up to these distributors, and they are confused about who will be distributing their funds back to them — Backpack, Kraken or Bitgo,” Kavuri said at the time.

Related: FTX’s 2-year repayment delay is a ‘win,’ claims trader who predicted FTX’s collapse

Details on the first part of the claims process

For distribution amounts, the FAQ page on Backpack’s website states that all positions were closed using market prices at the time the exchange was shut down, and each was settled in euros.

Furthermore, users with pending cryptocurrency withdrawals on Nov. 11, 2022, should have filed a claim in FTX’s US bankruptcy proceedings. Such users may be eligible to receive distributions from the FTX Recovery Trust, which Backpack is not involved with.

Additionally, EU residents who signed up for FTX before March 7, 2022, are not considered FTX EU customers and should file their claims with FTX International, not Backpack.

FTX Estate’s next round of distributions on May 30

FTX Digital Markets, separate from FTX EU, distributed its first round of reimbursements on Feb. 18, with exchanges BitGo and Kraken facilitating the distributions. That first round of reimbursements went to “Convenience Class” members, those with claims under $50,000. 

The next round of reimbursements tied to FTX’s US bankruptcy proceedings is set to go out on May 30 and includes creditors under Class 5 Customer Entitlement Claims and Class 6 General Unsecured Claims. FTX is expected to use $11.4 billion to make the payments

Magazine: The $2,500 doco about FTX collapse on Amazon Prime… with help from mom

Texas Senator Ted Cruz proposed a bill aimed at incentivizing crypto miners to use flared gas for energy generation in the state.

In an April 1 notice, Cruz said he had introduced the Facilitate Lower Atmospheric Released Emissions, or FLARE, Act in the US Senate, aiming to make Texas “the number one place for Bitcoin mining.”

Mining advocacy group Digital Power Network supported the bill, and Bitcoin (BTC) miner MARA Holdings endorsed the proposed legislation on X, claiming it would reduce emissions and “unlock stranded energy.”

April 1 draft of FLARE Act. Source: Ted Cruz

According to the text of the bill, the FLARE Act proposed amending the US Internal Revenue Code to incentivize market participants — including digital asset miners — to “capture gas that would otherwise be flared or vented and to use such gas in value-added products.” If signed into law, the legislation would take effect on properties put into service starting in 2026.

Related: Bitcoin mining using coal energy down 43% since 2011 — Report

A US senator serving since 2013, Cruz, a Republican, has sometimes proposed legislation that aligns with mainstream figures in his party, including US President Donald Trump. He introduced a bill in March to prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) and disclosed personally holding up to $100,000 in Bitcoin as of August 2024.

Crypto bills moving through US Congress

In addition to the energy incentives proposed in the bill, Cruz ​​said the language “prohibits entities owned by China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia” that may be operating in Texas from recovering their costs in the same manner. Many US miners, including MARA, Riot Platforms and CleanSpark, operate in the state.

It’s unclear whether Cruz’s bill will be a legislative priority in the Senate as Congress considers bills to regulate stablecoins and establish a market structure for digital assets in the US. Some lawmakers have also proposed legislation potentially banning a US CBDC and removing regulatory obstacles to allow Americans to invest in crypto for their retirement plans.

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Stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group has filed an S-1 registration statement for an initial public offering in the US, an April 1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows.

The USD Coin (USDC) issuer is planning to list its Class A common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “CRCL,” the filing shows.Circle’s prospectus does not detail the number of shares to be offered or what the IPO target price will be.

The IPO filing also showed that Circle brought in $1.67 billion in revenue for 2024 — marking a 16% year-on-year increase — while its EBIDTA (Earnings before Interest, Tax, Depreciation, and Amortization) fell 29% to $284.8 million.

Circle’s financials over the last three years ended Dec. 31. Source: SEC

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.

Crypto stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to go public on the New York Stock Exchange.

The USDC (USDC) issuer is planning to list its Class A common stock under the symbol “CRCL,” according to its April 1 Form S-1 registration statement with the SEC.

Circle’s prospectus does not detail the number of shares to be offered or what its initial public offering target price will be.

The filing also showed that Circle brought in $1.67 billion in revenue for 2024, a 16% year-on-year increase.

Its net income last year was $155.6 million — a 41.8% fall from 2023, while 2022 saw a net loss of $761.7 million.

Circle’s financials over the last three years ended Dec. 31. Source: SEC

The filing also showed that Circle paid nearly $908 million in 2024 to its main distribution partner, Coinbase, to circulate USDC on its crypto exchange.The hefty cost means Coinbase is making more money off USDC than Circle, Agora CEO Nick van Eck noted.The high costs partly explain why Circle’s revenue increased while its EBITDA, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, and net income fell in 2024, said VanEck head of digital asset research, Matthew Sigel.

Over 99% of Circle’s revenue last year came from its stablecoin reserves, the filing showed. The company generates part of its income by holding yield-bearing Treasury bills.

Circle also holds $6.2 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC), $5.6 million in Sui (SUI) and over $3.3 million in Ether (ETH), while also holding Sei (SEI), Aptos (APT) and Optimism (OP).

The firm has previously attempted to go public via a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) merger in 2021— which it abandoned in December 2022 — and again in January 2024 via a confidential filing with the SEC.

Related: Circle, Intercontinental Exchange to explore stablecoin integration

Crypto exchange Kraken and blockchain security firm BitGo are among the other industry players also reportedly seeking a public listing either this year or early 2026.

Circle became the first stablecoin issuer to receive regulatory approval in Japan on March 25 — launching USDC on the SBI VC Trade crypto exchange the following day.USDC is the second-largest stablecoin by market cap at $60.1 billion, trailing only Tether (USDT) at $143.9 billion, CoinGecko data shows.

Magazine: Unstablecoins: Depegging, bank runs and other risks loom

American Bitcoin Corp., a Trump family-backed crypto mining operation, has plans to raise additional capital, including through an initial public offering (IPO), according to an April 1 report by Bloomberg. 

On March 31, Hut 8 — a publicly traded Bitcoin (BTC) miner — acquired a majority stake in American Bitcoin (formerly American Data Centers), whose founders include Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. 

After the deal announcement, Hut 8 transferred its Bitcoin mining equipment into the newly created entity, which is not yet publicly traded. 

While American Bitcoin will focus on crypto mining, Hut 8 plans to target data center infrastructure for use cases such as high-performance computing. The deal “evolves Hut 8 toward more predictable, financeable, lower-cost-of-capital segments,” Asher Genoot, CEO of Hut 8, said in a statement.

“So you can see this in the long term as two sister publicly traded companies,” Genoot told Bloomberg. “One that is energy, infrastructure data centers and the other one that’s Bitcoin, AISCs and reserves and together they form a vertically integrated company that has some of the best economics out there.”

According to Bloomberg, American Bitcoin is working with Bitmain, a Chinese Bitcoin mining hardware supplier. Bitmain has faced scrutiny after the US blacklisting of its artificial intelligence affiliate Sopghgo, Bloomberg reported. 

Bitcoin mining revenues per quarter. Source: Coin Metrics

Related: Analysts eye Bitcoin miners’ AI, chip sales ahead of Q4 earnings

Pivoting to new business lines

Bitcoin miners are increasingly pivoting toward alternative business lines, such as servicing artificial intelligence models, after the Bitcoin network’s April 2024 “halving” cut into mining revenues.

Halvings occur every four years and cut in half the number of BTC mined per block.

Miners are “diversifying into AI data-center hosting as a way to expand revenue and repurpose existing infrastructure for high-performance computing,” Coin Metrics said in a March report.

Declining cryptocurrency prices have put even more pressure on Bitcoin miners in 2025, according to a report by JPMorgan.

Magazine: Elon Musk’s plan to run government on blockchain faces uphill battle

The Ethereum network’s main source of income from layer-2 (L2) scaling chains — “blob fees” — has sunk to the lowest weekly levels so far this year, according to data from Etherscan. 

In the week ending March 30, Ethereum earned only 3.18 Ether (ETH) from blob fees, according to Etherscan, or approximately $6,000 US dollars as of April 1. 

This figure marks a 73% drop from the prior week and a more than 95% decline from the week ending March 16, when Ethereum’s income from blob fees exceeded 84 ETH, Etherscan said in an X post. 

Source: Etherscan

Related: Ethereum fees poised for rebound amid L2, blob uptick

Post-Dencun growing pains

In March 2024, Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade migrated L2 transaction data to temporary offchain stores called “blobs.”

The upgrade cut costs for users but also reduced overall fee revenue for Ethereum — initially by as much as 95%, according to data from asset manager VanEck.

“ETH Fees Were Weak Due to Lack of Blob Revenues as L2s Have Not Filled Available Capacity,” Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s head of digital asset research, said in a Nov. 1, 2024, post on the X platform.

Since then, growth in blob fees has been unsteady. Ethereum’s weekly blob fee income peaked at nearly $1 million in November before declining sharply in recent weeks, according to data from Dune Analytics. 

Ethereum’s blob fee income has been uneven. Source: Dune Analytics

Ethereum’s ongoing struggle to earn meaningful income from blob fees underscores concerns about the network’s scaling model, which relies heavily on L2s for transaction throughput.

“Ethereum’s future will revolve around how effectively it serves as a data availability engine for L2s,” arndxt, author of the Threading on the Edge newsletter, said in a March 31 X post. 

According to an X post by Michael Nadeau, founder of The DeFi Report, L2 transaction volumes would need to increase more than 22,000-fold for blob fees to fully offset Ethereum’s peak transaction fee revenues. 

However, Ethereum’s economics are still evolving. For instance, the network’s Pectra Upgrade — which aims to significantly change how Ethereum allocates blob space — is scheduled for this year. 

“The plan is simple: scale Ethereum as much as possible to capture as much marketshare as we can – worry about fee revenue later,” Sassal, founder of The Daily Gwei, said in a March 17 X post. 

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Kristin Smith, CEO of the US-based Blockchain Association, will be leaving the cryptocurrency advocacy group for the recently launched Solana Policy Institute.

In an April 1 notice, the Blockchain Association (BA) said Smith would be stepping down from her role as CEO on May 16. According to the association, the soon-to-be former CEO will become president of the Solana Policy Institute on May 19.

The association’s notice did not provide an apparent reason for the move to the Solana advocacy organization nor say who would lead the group after Smith’s departure. Cointelegraph reached out to the Blockchain Association for comment but did not receive a response at the time of publication.

Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith’s April 1 announcement. Source: LinkedIn

Smith, who has worked at the BA since 2018 and was deputy chief of staff for former Montana Representative Denny Rehberg, will follow DeFi Education Fund CEO Miller Whitehouse-Levine, leaving his position to join the Solana Policy Institute as CEO. According to Whitehouse-Levine, the organization plans to educate US policymakers on Solana.

Related: Congress on track for stablecoin, market structure bills by August: Blockchain Association

With members from the crypto industry, including Coinbase, Ripple Labs, and Chainlink Labs, the BA has filed a lawsuit against the US Internal Revenue Service, challenging regulations requiring brokers to report crypto transactions. The group often criticized the US Securities and Exchange Commission under former chair Gary Gensler for its “regulation by enforcement” approach to crypto, resulting in steep legal fees for many companies.

Less than 48 hours after the Solana Policy Institute’s launch, it’s unclear what the group’s immediate goals may be for engaging with US lawmakers and advocating for the industry. The organization described itself as a non-partisan nonprofit group.

Magazine: Solana ‘will be a trillion-dollar asset’: Mert Mumtaz, X Hall of Flame

GoMining, a platform that allows users to mine Bitcoin (BTC) through data centers, is launching a $100 million Bitcoin mining fund for institutional investors. Custodied by Bitgo, the fund promises annual distributions from mining yield and a strategy that focuses on Bitcoin rewards and reinvestment.

GoMining’s Alpha Blocks Fund comes as more companies have added Bitcoin to their balance sheets, capturing enthusiasm surrounding the resurgence of the world’s top cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Companies that have done so, including Japan’s Metaplanet and medical technology company Semler Scientific, have seen their stock prices increase.

“Unlike passive equity investments, the Alpha Blocks Fund offers direct exposure to mined Bitcoin via a fully managed, compounding hashrate strategy,” a GoMining spokesperson told Cointelegraph.

“BTC rewards are reinvested to increase the fund’s hashrate and improve miner efficiency — creating real, yield-driven outcomes. Our model is built for performance, not market sentiment, and integrates utility-based advantages that listed mining companies typically don’t offer.”

According to a press release shared with Cointelegraph, GoMining Institutional operates with 7.3 Exahash of active hash power.

Related: Is cryptocurrency mining still profitable in 2025?

“This framework ensures compliance with relevant regulatory requirements and supports our focus on delivering institutional-grade exposure to Bitcoin mining yield strategies,” said the spokesperson, adding that retail users can access a separate digital mining product.

The fund will charge a 2% flat annual management fee, with no performance fees applied.

While GoMining’s Bitcoin fund caters to institutional investors, its flagship product is geared toward retail miners who may lack the funds to create a heavy-duty mining rig. In 2024, it revealed an attempt to gamify Bitcoin mining through the use of non-fungible tokens.

Institutional investment in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies like Ether (ETH) has been on the rise since 2024, when the first cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds were launched in the United States.

Regulatory clarity from Europe’s MiCA and the enthusiasm for digital assets in the United States might be changing institutional investors’ skepticism about cryptocurrencies. In March 2025, a report by Coinbase revealed that 83% of institutions are planning a crypto allocation.

Magazine: AI may already use more power than Bitcoin — and it threatens Bitcoin mining

For the second time, Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville is set to reintroduce a bill aimed at allowing Americans to add cryptocurrency to their retirement savings plans.

In a March 31 Fox News interview, Tuberville said he planned to reintroduce his “Financial Freedoms Act” legislation after two failed attempts to get the legislation through Congress in 2022 and 2023. In announcing the bill, the Alabama senator said he wanted to help US President Donald Trump’s perceived role as a “crypto president.” 

“Give people a chance to breathe for once […] let them do what they do best [which] is invest their money,” said the senator. 

The Financial Freedom Act, which Tuberville first introduced in the US Senate in May 2022, proposed scaling back regulations with the Department of Labor over the types of investments used in 401(k) retirement plan fiduciaries. The senator said he would reintroduce the bill on April 1, but congressional records showed no movement at the time of publication.

Related: Trump-linked crypto ventures may complicate US stablecoin policy

Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis was a cosponsor of the 2023 bill, but at the time of publication, it was unclear whether she intended to support it again. In a 2022 interview, the Republican senator said she was “very comfortable with making sure that people can include Bitcoin in their retirement funds.”

Crypto legislation in the 119th session of Congress

The crypto retirement bill came as members of the Republican-controlled Congress considered legislation to establish market structure rules for the industry and stablecoin regulations.

Proponents of the legislation have suggested that lawmakers get the bills to Trump’s desk to sign into law before the August recess. After that time, they could become more politically charged issues. 

On April 1, Florida voters will decide on their House representatives in the state’s 1st and 6th congressional districts. Republicans Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine have support from the crypto industry through media buys financed by the Defend American Jobs political action committee. As of March 22, the PAC has spent roughly $1.5 million to support the two candidates.

Magazine: Trump’s crypto ventures raise conflict of interest, insider trading questions