Morpho just closed the largest funding round in DeFi history: $175 million at a $2 billion valuation, led by Paradigm, a16z, and Ribbit Capital. In this conversation, Camila Russo sits down with Morpho co-founder Merlin Egalite to unpack the raise and what's next for the protocol. Topics covered: Why Morpho chose a pure token structure over equity, and what it means for long-term alignment How the Morpho Association funds itself, and responses to criticism around transparency and decentralization Midnight, Morpho's next major upgrade — an intent-based, fixed-rate lending model Vault risk and curator accountability, including lessons from the Stream Finance event How Morpho differentiates from Aave despite trailing in TVL The growing wave of institutional interest — from asset managers to neobanks and fintechs Morpho's long-term ambition: capturing a share of the $200 trillion global credit market Guest: Merlin Egalite, Co-founder of Morpho Host: Camila Russo, The Defiant

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong disclosed three platform-scale metrics on Thursday: approximately $1 trillion in annual stablecoin movement, $20 billion in USDC held on platform, and more than 160 million autonomous transactions via the x402 agentic payments protocol in the last year.

Citigroup is making tokenized interests in private companies available to wealth-management and institutional clients on SIX Digital Exchange, the Wall Street Journal reported. The bank has already completed its first transaction and is in talks with additional private firms.

Delaware and New Jersey each advanced bills this week to ban cryptocurrency ATMs statewide, citing over $400 million in annual nationwide fraud losses and a scam pattern that disproportionately targets older residents.

Digital Asset has closed a $355 million funding round led by a16z crypto, with HSBC, Apollo, CME, BNP Paribas, ADIA, ABN Amro, S&P Global, Tradeweb and more than 20 other institutional names joining as investors.

The agreement with developer BHL Group is an early-stage memorandum of understanding, and the Alba Bay community is not slated to break ground until 2027

Binance's direct stock-trading platform drew more than 80% of its first-week volume from emerging markets, with assets under management crossing $400 million within seven days. The 2% share of TradFi-referenced perpetuals volume positions the June 1 launch as a distribution play for underserved retail users.

Kalshi opened more than 150 insider-trading investigations in the first quarter of 2026, blocked over 100 potential insider trades, and referred at least 20 cases to law enforcement. The CFTC-regulated prediction market paired the numbers Tuesday with a new risk-scoring framework, employment-verification requirements for traders on high-risk markets, and expanded whistleblower tools.

Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, examining whether banks unlawfully terminated customer accounts for political reasons. The probe directly validates the crypto industry's Operation Chokepoint 2.0 grievances.

An NFT creator published a thread claiming to trace large ADA flows to IOG-linked stake pool pledges from the 2021 bull market. Cardano's founder has made no public statement in response to the new analysis. ADA is down 42% over the past 30 days.