Trent Van Epps has left the Ethereum Foundation after five years, expressing gratitude for his team's collaboration on upgrades and funding. He will still contribute to Protocol Guild and Ethereum's political economy.

U.S. Representative reintroduces the “Digital Asset Protection Act,” revises the treatment of cryptocurrency taxation, removes the tax-exempt threshold for small transactions, clarifies the conditions for recognizing gains from stablecoin transactions, and sets rules for determining cost basis. Industry expects the bill to drive the inclusion of crypto provisions in tax legislation.

Gate News update, April 14, last December, a crypto community member @ufukless1 had to pay medical bills due to illness, and minted an NFT priced at $10 on OpenSea; 15k NFTs were fully minted. After that, Rave DAO air-dropped RAVE tokens to all minters. Currently, this airdrop is worth between $200 and $5,000, giving buyers returns of 20x to 500x.

Gate News message, April 13, the European Central Bank (ECB) said it supports the EU’s transfer of financial market supervisory powers from national regulators in each member state to a single EU supervisory authority. The measure covers crypto-asset service providers (Crypto-asset Service Providers, CASPs). The purpose is to standardize crypto-asset regulation across the EU.

Gate News message, April 11, Tesla’s FSD driver-assistance software received regulatory approval in the Netherlands, becoming the first EU country to approve the software for on-road use. Tesla said it hopes other EU member states will take similar action. Widespread adoption of FSD is at the core of Tesla’s growth strategy. A large portion of the company’s current valuation of roughly $1 trillion depends on Musk’s bet that AI-driven self-driving software and robotaxi services will become the company’s primary revenue sources in the future.

The European Central Bank supports transferring regulatory authority over cross-border financial market participants such as crypto-asset service providers to the European Securities and Markets Authority, with the aim of strengthening the integration of the EU capital markets and their competitiveness; the related proposals will be subject to legislative talks between member states and the European Parliament.

Securitize, an asset tokenization platform, appointed Brett Redfearn as President and a member of the board of directors on April 9. Redfearn previously served as Chair of the advisory committee and has extensive experience in regulation and market structure, helping advance the development of capital markets.

Iran’s regime is increasingly using cryptocurrencies for cross-border trade, especially in oil sales. In 2024, an IRGC member linked to the Houthis facilitated more than $178 million in oil transactions through crypto addresses; by 2025, the network began purchasing weapons from Russia using cryptocurrencies, with transaction volumes nearing $1 billion.

Gate News message, April 5, the prediction market platform Polymarket has taken down a betting page related to a U.S. military rescue operation. Local time on Friday, a U.S. F-15E fighter jet was shot down by Iran, one crew member has been rescued, and the other remains missing and falling. The page previously allowed users to bet on which day the U.S. side would confirm that the two pilots had been rescued.

Anthropic has applied to the U.S. Federal Election Commission to form a member-funded political action committee, AnthroPAC, a move tied to its dispute with the Trump administration over the use of AI for military purposes. The company previously refused the Pentagon’s request and sued the government; a court has temporarily stayed the finding that it poses a risk to the national security supply chain.