Deutsche Börse takes a $200 million stake in Kraken, one of the largest direct investments by a legacy exchange into a crypto platform.

Rakuten Wallet integrates XRP for 44 million Japanese users as both a listed asset and a payment method across its massive ecosystem of 5 million merchants nationwide.

Ripple is positioning for distribution. They're going to spend a lot on marketing and partnerships this year.

Zachxbt calls out Kucoin for facilitating over $13 million in illicit money laundering through 150 different KuCoin deposit addresses the past week alone. The money was tied to a fake Ledger app ($9.5m) and the Bitcoin Depot hack ($3.6m)

Iran mulls pausing its Hormuz shipping to avoid derailing talks -Bloomberg

The Iranian regime needs a deal and sanctions relief or it will face complete economic disaster.

TS Lombard: We stick to our view that this crisis will be resolved by the end of May at the latest. The Iran regime needs a deal for survival. For the US and the rest of the world the primary stake is avoiding a global recession.

🚨Hearing for Kevin Warsh as Federal Reserve chair is re-scheduled for next week. Tim Scott says he is confident the DOJ will conclude its probe into Jerome Powell soon and expects the nomination to succeed.

Once Kevin Warsh is sworn in and starts cutting everything will go fugazi

US March producer prices rose 0.5% monthly and 4.0% yearly, below forecasts of 1.1% and 4.6%

Bullish

According to Reuters, citing Pakistani and Iranian officials, trilateral US-Pakistan-Iran talks could resume later this week in Islamabad

Repeated corrections in its lawsuits have eroded judges' presumption of regularity, replacing it with deep skepticism toward the DOJ during the Trump era. -Bloomberg

Trump's DOJ has become a meme.

BTC taps $76k as traders price in Iran's growing willingness to end uranium enrichment before July.

WH Sr. Adviser Hassett at it again: There is room for the Fed to cut.

Hassett's buddy Kevin Warsh is about to get confirmed as Fed Chair.

🚨Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump's nominee for Fed chair, has disclosed assets with his wife Jane Lauder that total at least $192 million -Bloomberg

OpenAI’s $852bn valuation is under increasing scrutiny from its own backers as the group switches focus to the enterprise market and tackling competition from Anthropic -FT

Israel-Lebanon talks at the U.S. State Department have begun

Bullish

🚨US CENTCOM: More than 10,000 US sailors, marines, and airmen, over a dozen warships, and dozens of aircraft are executing a mission to blockade ships entering and departing Iranian ports.

IMF urges members to be prepared for market dysfunction, liquidity squeeze

That comes later, in 2027

Iran has said there is still no agreement with the US -CNN

Funny how BTC still reacts to FUD coming from Iran. Me and you ain't selling but manipulators still try to milk it.

Sec Wright on Iran blockade: We put the military pressure on Iran to degrade their capacities to menace the region, and now, we're going to put an economic squeeze on them, end their oil revenues from coming out of their country. This is the way to bring this conflict to an end.

Iran getting r*ped right now

The US will allow the temporary waiver of sanctions on Iranian oil on the sea to expire this week - two US officials.

Btc dumping again on this. Just like with tariffs, they will sign a peace deal only when markets stop reacting to news about negotiations.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse expresses continued optimism on the Clarity Act, stating that peak frustration is when compromise finally happens

Why would Ripple care about the Clarity Act, they've been hiring call centers to dump on retirees since 2017

Trump: second round of talks with Iran could take place in Pakistan within the next two days