Macron Sounds Alarm on U.S. Crypto Deregulation

Canada's tax authority has collected more than $100 million CAD (roughly $72 million USD) from crypto-related audits over the past three years, but has failed to bring any criminal charges since 2020, according to court filings obtained by The Canadian Press that reveal structural limitations in the country's enforcement capabilities.

The CRA's 35-person crypto audit team has worked on over 230 files and estimates that 40% of taxpayers using crypto platforms have either failed to file taxes or are at high risk of non-compliance, according to the report. Yet the agency's own top crypto auditor acknowledged in a sworn affidavit that the CRA believes "there is no way to reliably identify taxpayers operating in the crypto space and assess compliance" with income tax obligations.

Furthermore, the CRA has obtained a court order for data on 2,500 users from Dapper Labs, the NFT firm behind NBA Top Shot and CryptoKitties, through a court order, the report states. The CRA initially sought information on Dapper's top 18,000 users, but settled for 2,500 following negotiations with Dapper's company officials and lawyers.

The CRA's September Federal Court application marked only the second time a court has ordered such a disclosure from a Canadian crypto firm, following a similar order issued to Toronto-based exchange Coinsquare in 2020. Dapper Labs did not immediately respond to a request for further comment from The Block. 

Though the CRA's push into crypto has been effective from a monetary standpoint, enforcement remains difficult. While the CRA has initiated five criminal investigations with a "digital asset component" since 2020, four remain ongoing with no charges filed. The agency attributed the delays to the complexity of cases involving cross-border activity, limited evidence availability, and the need for international cooperation, per the report. 

"The CRA’s criminal investigations are complex and often require years to complete," the agency told The Canadian Press. "The length of time required to investigate will be dependent on the complexity, number of individuals involved, availability of evidence, international requests for assistance, and level of co-operation of witnesses with a view to determine whether criminal charges are warranted."

The enforcement gap comes as Canada advances new stablecoin legislation and prepares to launch a dedicated financial crimes agency by spring 2026. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced in October that the new agency would be "Canada's first-ever organization dedicated to investigating sophisticated financial crimes and recovering illicit proceeds from criminals."

Meanwhile, FINTRAC, the country's anti-money laundering agency, has been more active on that front, fining exchange Cryptomus a record C$176.96 million ($126.2 million USD) for anti-money laundering and sanctions evasion in October, and levying a C$19.5 million ($14.1 million) administrative monetary penalty on international crypto exchange KuCoin on similar counts in late September. KuCoin is appealing the penalty in Canadian court. FINTRAC also fined Binance C$6 million ($4.2 million USD) in May of last year. 

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

With Bitcoin now in its fourth quadrennial halving, other decentralized projects have adopted similar supply-cut cycles — and Bittensor is approaching its first since launching in 2021.

Bittensor, a decentralized, open-source machine-learning network built around specialized “subnets” that incentivize marketplaces for AI services, is expected to undergo its inaugural halving on or around Dec. 14. At that point, issuance of its native token, TAO (TAO), will drop to 3,600 per day from the current 7,200.

Grayscale Research analyst William Ogden Moore called the event a “key milestone in the network’s maturation as it progresses toward its 21 million token supply cap,” matching Bitcoin’s (BTC) fixed limit.

Privacy-focused Ethereum Layer 2 developer Aztec Network closed its public AZTEC token sale Saturday, collecting 19,476 ETH from more than 16,700 participants in what the project claims represents a shift away from insider-dominated token launches.

The sale, which ran from December 2-6 using a novel Continuous Clearing Auction mechanism built with Uniswap Labs, raised approximately $61.3 million at current ether prices. Aztec said half of the capital came from its existing community, such as testnet operators, early users of its now-shuttered Aztec Connect product, and other ecosystem participants, rather than large institutional allocations.

Aztec's token distribution eschewed the airdrop model that has become standard for Layer 2 launches in favor of what it described as a "fair-access" auction. The CCA mechanism started at a floor price corresponding to a $350 million fully diluted valuation, which Aztec said represented a 75% discount to the implied valuation from its equity financing rounds. Per-user caps of 240 ETH were instituted to limit whale concentration.

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams praised the sale in a post on X. "No sniping, bundling, timing games," Adams wrote. "Just slow, fair price discovery ending at 59% above the floor — with literally days to bid earlier and get a better average price."

A Uniswap v4 liquidity pool containing 273 million AZTEC tokens (roughly 2.6% of total supply) will also go live following the token generation event to bootstrap secondary market trading.

AZTEC tokens purchased through the sale will remain non-transferable until at least February 11, 2026. Token holders can then initiate a governance vote to unlock transferability. If no vote passes, tokens will unlock linearly through November 2026. Validators wishing to stake must commit 200,000 AZTEC tokens.

The a16z-backed project had raised $100 million in Series B funding in December 2022, with additional backing from Paradigm and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. The company has raised about $119 million in total funding, per Crunchbase. 

Aztec launched its privacy-focused Ethereum Layer 2 network, Ignition Chain, in mid-November. Aztec called Ignition the "first fully decentralized L2 on Ethereum," which will power the firm's vision of a "private world computer."

165 nodes are currently powering the network, according to the project's dashboard. The chain is currently producing blocks but does not yet process user transactions, a deliberate staging approach the team says will allow real economic stress-testing before full functionality launches in early 2026. Nearly 556 million AZTEC tokens have been staked. 

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Bitcoin’s Sunday price action turned chaotic after a wave of whale-driven sell orders triggered a rapid $2,000 drop, mass liquidations, and an equally aggressive rebound.

The moves wiped out both long and short traders within hours, raising fresh concerns about low-liquidity manipulation and order book fragility at a time when Bitcoin continues hovering above $91,000.

$1.39 Billion in Bitcoin Dumped Within One Hour

Several analysts reported a what appeared to be coordinated sell-offs, where more than 15,565 BTC, worth roughly $1.39 billion, hit the market in a single hour.

The sudden surge in supply hitting the market simultaneously accelerated Bitcoin’s decline from $89,700 to $87,700, setting the stage for a cascade of liquidations.

$171 Million in Liquidations as Longs and Shorts Get Wiped

The sharp initial drop wiped out $171 million worth of BTC longs, caught off guard as the Bitcoin price fell $2,000 in minutes before rebounding with equal force. As of this writing, the Bitcoin price is $91,494.

Along with this quick recovery, almost $14 million in short positions were liquidated in the past hour and over $91 million in the past four hours.

Data from Coinglass confirms the scale of the damage. Over the past 24 hours, 121,628 traders were liquidated, resulting in total liquidations of $346.67 million.

Traders Call It “Engineered Liquidity Collection”

Market commentators say this wasn’t normal volatility, with Marto arguing that the sequence was not accidental.

Others pointed to the speed of the recovery, with Lenny, a trader known for tracking liquidity flows, remarking about the whipsaw.

The quick absorption suggests strong spot demand remains intact even as aggressive leverage flushes continue at weekend lows.

Can Bitcoin Maintain $90,000?

The Bitcoin price is recovering its weekend losses but still showing signs of heavy intraday stress. The dual liquidations demonstrate how thin order books on weekends continue to be a target for large players capable of moving billions of dollars in minutes.

Spot demand may stabilize price action into the upcoming week, especially as liquidity normalizes and derivatives markets reset.

With over $300 million in liquidations behind it, Bitcoin enters the next trading sessions with cleared leverage, but also heightened sensitivity to further whale-driven moves.

Meanwhile, data shows that $1 billion in short positions are at risk of liquidation if the Bitcoin price pumps to $93,000.

Notably, the $93,000 threshold stands barely 2% above current levels.

Global asset manager WisdomTree has launched a new digital asset fund that brings a traditional options strategy onchain, a development that underscores the growing convergence between legacy asset management and blockchain-based financial infrastructure.

The WisdomTree Equity Premium Income Digital Fund, trading under the token ticker EPXC and the fund ticker WTPIX, is designed to track the price and yield performance of the Volos US Large Cap Target 2.5% PutWrite Index. 

The benchmark models a systematic “put-writing” strategy, in which the index sells cash-secured put options to generate income. Rather than writing options directly on the S&P 500, the strategy uses contracts tied to the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY), effectively earning premiums by acting as the option seller.

In a recent tweet, Ripple CTO David Schwartz indicated that his hub had been running on rippled v2.6.2 with no issues reported. This information from the Ripple CTO prompted a question from an X user who asked what the hub was for.

Responding to this question, Schwartz outlined three reasons why he chose to run a hub on XRP Ledger. First, he hadn't been running any XRPL infrastructure for a few years and thought it would be cool to start again.

Second, there had been some instances of increased latency between some validators, and he believes that one good megahub could meaningfully reduce network latency and network diameter and increase reliability.

Third, there were some localized issues with XRPL not performing as well as expected in some cases, and he needed a hub to test his theories for what might be causing these issues.

Ripple CTO explains XRP Ledger push

In August, Ripple CTO David Schwartz unveiled plans for a hub dedicated to UNL validators, other hubs and servers running XRPL applications. This, as a single server, would operate as a production service aiming for maximum uptime and reliability, relying on a single hub.

Data gathered from it to understand network behavior and performance, and no disruptive testing would be done unless there were very unusual circumstances justifying it.

The announcement of the hub and its launch came weeks before the Ripple CTO announced resignation from his role by the end of this year.

In September, Schwartz said he was stepping back from daily duties to become "CTO emeritus" while remaining active in the XRP community. Schwartz, a key architect of XRP Ledger, announced his transition to focus on family and personal projects related to XRP.

Schwartz said he wasn't going away from the XRP community as he spun up his XRP node while publishing its output data and researching other use cases for XRP besides what Ripple is focused on and more.

The Ripple CTO said he enjoys his current activity on XRP Ledger: "Getting my hands dirty, talking to builders, coding for the pure love of it and I’m really excited to get back to that."