[News Brief] Apr 22, morning | Bitcoin (BTC) holders have suffered more than $100 million in losses due to a key generation vulnerability in COLDCARD wallets.

U.S. Senate Democrats plan to block the cloture vote on the CLARITY Act, citing a deadlock in ethics negotiations.

As a result, the bill is increasingly unlikely to secure the 60 votes needed before the August 7 recess. Punchbowl News reported that Democrats do not intend to provide the votes required for cloture. The lack of meaningful progress in related ethics negotiations was cited as the reason. A cloture vote is the procedural step required to end debate on a bill and move to a final vote. In the U.S. Senate, 60 votes are needed to pass it.

The United States, Iran, and Oman are discussing a 60-day interim arrangement to reopen transit through the Strait of Hormuz.

CryptoPotato reported on the 5th that expectations surrounding a Strait of Hormuz agreement were cited as a factor affecting Bitcoin prices. Axios reported that the proposed interim arrangement includes a plan for ships entering the Persian Gulf to use the northern route through Iranian territorial waters, while ships heading to the Arabian Sea would use the southern route through Omani territorial waters. However, the negotiations have not yet reached a final agreement.

Iran has stated that it will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz even if the two countries reach an agreement, should U.S. violations continue.

Odaily reported that Iran made U.S. compliance with the agreement a precondition for reopening the strait. Iranian officials said that if the United States continues to violate the agreement, merely reaching a deal will not be enough to reopen the waterway.

Bitcoin (BTC) holders have suffered more than $100 million in losses due to a key generation vulnerability in COLDCARD wallets.

Insufficient randomness in the wallet’s seed generation process has been identified as the cause of the incident. Decrypt reported that some COLDCARD wallets generated seeds from a more limited set of combinations than expected, allowing attackers to brute-force the possible combinations and discover private keys. A seed is the basis from which all private keys in a wallet are derived, so if it is exposed, funds can be accessed. Entropy refers to the amount of randomness that makes a seed difficult to predict and is expressed in bits. The lower the entropy, the fewer combinations an attacker needs to check. The incident has also reignited debate over whether device-based random number generators should be trusted or whether users should directly add randomness using dice or similar methods. COLDCARD offers a feature that allows users to add dice rolls to seed generation or completely replace the device’s random number generation method.

Bybit’s Austrian payments subsidiary has secured an electronic money license.

The company can now expand payment services in the European Union. Cointelegraph reported that this regulatory approval enables Bybit to develop card payment and merchant payment services. Its business scope also includes open banking and peer-to-peer (P2P) payment services.

BlackRock has launched the stablecoin reserve fund BRSRV and will place short-term U.S. Treasuries on the Solana (SOL), Ethereum (ETH), and Tempo blockchains.

Odaily reported that BRSRV will manage short-term U.S. Treasuries used as stablecoin reserve assets on-chain. BlackRock’s new product is structured to connect tokenized Treasuries with stablecoin reserve infrastructure.

Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) is establishing a dedicated department for virtual assets and stablecoins.

The new department will begin operations on the 7th. Foresight News reported that the new organization will be called the “Virtual Assets and Stablecoins Department.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a comprehensive digital currency regulation law.

Key provisions will take effect on September 1. TechFlow reported that the law contains measures that shift Russia’s regulatory direction on cryptocurrencies.

Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) will phase in the Travel Rule for virtual asset service provider (VASP) asset transfers starting in October 2026.

For transfers of NT$30,000 or more per transaction, the sender must provide basic transaction information along with the customer’s date of birth and address. The rule will first apply to transfers between VASPs within Taiwan, and receiving institutions will verify customer identities using the information provided. Yahoo Finance reported that transfers involving VASP addresses outside Taiwan will be subject to the rule by the end of 2027. Businesses that fail to incorporate the relevant procedures into internal control systems or do not fulfill information transmission obligations may face fines ranging from NT$500,000 to NT$10 million under Taiwan’s Anti-Money Laundering Act.

About $207 million worth of positions were liquidated in the cryptocurrency market over the past 24 hours.

The number of liquidated accounts was recorded at 68,599. According to Coinglass, long liquidations totaled $69.295 million, while short liquidations reached $137 million. For Bitcoin (BTC), $6.2574 million in long positions and $29.1873 million in short positions were liquidated. For Ethereum (ETH), $5.2813 million in long positions and $11.9011 million in short positions were closed. The largest single liquidation occurred on Binance’s BTCUSDC pair, amounting to $6.4511 million.