Cardano Community Approves $71 Million Spend For Network Upgrades

The Cardano community has approved a $71 million treasury spend for upgrade to the Cardano network. Cardano’s main development team, the Input Output Global (IOG), had previously submitted a proposal for the equivalent of $71 million in Cardano ADA to proceed with upgrades to the network. Consequently, the Cardano community passed a vote with 74 per cent (200 votes) in favour of the upgrade.

Funding for the 12-month development plan will be milestone based, with payments tied to the delivery of the upgrades. The Cardano member-based organisation, Intersect, will serve as an independent administrator. The upgrade with focus on improving scalability, developer experience and interoperability, according to Cointelegraph.

Further, IOG will also have to publish monthly updates, engineering timesheets and quarterly budget breakdowns throughout the duration of the project.

US CFTC Starts ‘Crypto Sprint’ With SEC For Implementing Trump’s Crypto Plans

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has launched a “crypto sprint” to start implementing the crypto-related recommendations recently released by the US administration. The initiatives are aimed at implementing agency-specific recommendations that US President Donald Trump’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets had made in a report following Trump’s crypto-related executive order earlier this January.

CFTC Acting Chair Caroline Pham said that the CFTC will work closely with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Paul Atkins and Commissioner Hester Peirce to implement these White House recommendations. “The CFTC is wasting no time in fulfilling President Trump’s vision to make America the crypto capital of the world,” Cointelegraph quoted Pham as saying.

Trump’s Working Group had made 18 recommendations to the CFTC. The first called for the CFTC to advance a host of initiatives, including guidance on how cryptocurrencies could be considered commodities, how its registration requirements would work with decentralised finance, and guidance to CFTC-regulated entities on what they can do with crypto.

BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Set For Huge Lead With US SEC Boost

BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) may get bigger now that the US SEC has increased the position limits for many Bitcoin funds. This will likely suppress Bitcoin’s volatility and lead to more spot demand for Bitcoin ETFs, crypto financial services firm NYDIG has said.

Recently, the SEC increased the number of allowed options contracts from 25,000 to 250,000 “for all ETFs with options”. “However, this includes the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT), but not the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC). The change is likely to widen the monstrous lead that IBIT already has over the other players, while it hobbles FBTC’s position as the second-largest options player,” Cointelegraph quoted NYDIG’s global head of research, Greg Cipolaro, as saying in a report. IBIT has $85.50 billion in assets under management (AUM), four times as much as FBTC, the second-largest Bitcoin (BTC) ETF by assets with $21.35 billion.

“This change enables more aggressive implementation of options strategies, like covered call selling,” he said, where traders sell a call option while owning the underlying asset, which limits downside risk but also the amount gained from the trade.