Breaking

The state of Illinois decided to make a difference in the world of blockchain, and it succeeded. The local Senate wants to be able to... cancel bitcoin transactions. According to the Digital Property Protection and Law Enforcement Act, validators must cancel transactions and return the funds to the sender or transfer them to the state Treasury if ordered by the state's attorney. The same goes for smart contracts, which must be rescinded upon a valid court request. Shall we expect a manual sunset in the next bill?

The Wall Street Journal recently published a sensational article about a handful of mysterious coders-maintainers who back Bitcoin Core and have the power to crash the network at any time! It turns out that Bitcoin Core only has 5 maintainers, with the sixth leaving the group due to burnout and health issues. And only 17 people had the ability to change the code throughout the entire BTC existence. Furthermore, the code base is hosted on GitHub, a Microsoft-owned website... What? Five cripples decide the fate of the world's most decentralized project? While our editor was getting an indirect heart massage, our techs reassured everyone that this was pure FUD and that there are plenty of ways to avoid any of these guys' tricks. Also, the well-known cypherpunk Adam Back has already come up with a counter-argument. Take a deep breath and relax!

Aave announced the freezing of reserves of the exchange's sole stablecoin BUSD in light of Paxos' move. Mark Zeller claims that the coin has no chance of developing and that it may harm the project's arbitrage opportunities. The 26th of February is predicted to be the Doomsday for BUSD on Ave. Which stablecoin will take the place of the coin is yet to be determined.

Russian dev Alexey Pertsev will stay in jail until his hearing scheduled for April 21. This is the third that his lawyers’ request for bail was dismissed. His first appeal was rejected in August, the second – in November. The Dutch court clings to such a heavy-handed approach due to Pertsev's alleged ties with the FSB and the North Korean hackers Lazarus Group. This crime is rated as more severe than just tax evasion.

The Cardano project released the Valentine upgrade on Valentine's Day. Evidently, to ensure that lonely devs won't be without a gift. What about the features of the upgrade? Ability to create cross-network bridges that enable transactions to occur between various blockchains. Enhanced cryptographic features. Improving cross-chain decentralized application (dApp) development on the smart contract platform. The price of the ADA token increased by 8%, outperforming BTC and ETH.

The SEC accuses Paxos Trust, the Pax Dollar, and BUSD stablecoins issuer, of illegal trading securities. You sound like a broken record, Mr. Gensler! The Commission seems to have a hard time in court: Paxos has been authorized by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS); it operates under its supervision, and its stablecoins are actively used by institutional investors in the United States. The crypto community will see an epic battle between SEC prosecutors and NYDFS lawyers! We’re wondering who has more powerful attorneys: Paxos or Ripple?