Privacy-focused blockchain protocol Zama said it will accelerate compliance measures and proceed with its confidential USDC launch after a US court lifted a temporary freeze on about $12.5 million in USDC held in its cUSDC smart contract, according to a Tuesday X post by co-founder Rand Hindi.The freeze, first reported by Cointelegraph on Saturday, stemmed from a temporary restraining order obtained in connection with an ongoing dispute involving stakeholders of an unrelated project, Overnight Finance. Circle froze the funds after receiving the court order, even though Zama was not a party to the case, according to Hindi’s account.“The same court has now lifted the freeze, determining that it was unwarranted,” Hindi wrote. He added that the protocol’s cUSDC contract and all underlying USDC had returned to normal operation.The incident highlights tensions between privacy-focused blockchain infrastructure and centralized stablecoins whose issuers can freeze assets under court order. Hindi argued that the episode “could have happened to any protocol holding freezable assets,” including decentralized exchanges, lending protocols and bridges.Zama USDC freeze lifted. Source: Rand HindiAccording to Hindi, approximately $12.5 million in USDC was deposited into Zama’s confidential USDC wrapper on May 11. He said the deposit address later became the subject of litigation and a temporary restraining order connected to a dispute involving Overnight Finance. Because the deposit represented more than 99% of the contract’s total value shielded, plaintiffs sought a blanket freeze order through Circle, he said.Jeremy Bradley, Zama’s chief operating officer, told Cointelegraph the court ultimately concluded that freezing an entire smart contract pool imposed disproportionate harm on uninvolved users. He said Zama demonstrated that, because its protocol preserves visible sender and recipient addresses while encrypting balances and amounts, the disputed account could be isolated and frozen directly without affecting other users.Bradley said the case illustrates how protocols holding centralized stablecoins in pooled contracts may be exposed to similar risks. “Automated market makers, lending protocols, bridges, and anyone holding USDC in a pooled contract is effectively one court order away from this exact situation,” he said.Related: SEC Commissioner Peirce defends crypto privacy tools against surveillance pushZama to accelerate compliance roadmapIn response, Zama said it will accelerate its compliance roadmap, including introducing automatic enforcement of compliance actions taken by underlying asset issuers. Under the proposed framework, if Circle freezes a USDC address, the corresponding confidential USDC held by that address would also be frozen. The protocol also plans to establish a compliance council and integrate additional compliance and transaction-monitoring tools.Bradley said the measures accelerate an existing roadmap rather than represent a change in strategy. “We always designed the protocol with programmable compliance in mind,” he said, adding that the incident made deploying those tools more urgent and would help provide institutions with greater confidence in the protocol’s ability to respond to legal requests.Despite the incident, Hindi said Zama remains committed to building on USDC and plans to launch its cUSDC product later this month, including shielding $5 million of USDC from its own treasury.Bradley said the episode has reinforced interest from institutional users rather than dampened it, arguing that the court’s decision to lift the freeze demonstrated that the protocol can operate within existing legal frameworks while preserving privacy features. He added that Circle was acting pursuant to a court order and that the broader issue was the lack of tools for carrying out targeted freezes without affecting entire smart contract pools.Asia Express: North Korea denies crypto hacks, Upbit’s bank tests Ripple

Georgia will reportedly install electricity meters across villages and settlements in Mestia as part of a crackdown on illegal crypto mining that officials say is straining the region’s power grid.Vice Prime Minister Mamuka Mdinaradze said Monday that illegal mining had pushed Mestia’s electricity consumption to 133 million kilowatt-hours in 2025, more than 13 times the level of comparable municipalities, according to local outlet 1tv.Large-scale illegal mining operations have led to deteriorating energy supply and grid overload, resulting in numerous outages in the region, affecting both residents and tourists, Mdinaradze reportedly said, adding that law enforcement agencies have also been tasked with identifying illegal mining operations.Cointelegraph reached out to the Georgian government for comment on the sanctions for illegal mining activities and whether these operations are offered a licensing pathway for legitimization.Mdinaradze speaking at a Monday press conference. Source: 1tv.ge Illegal Bitcoin mining cost Mestia $9.5 million annually, says vice PMIllegal Bitcoin mining operations in the Municipality of Mestia pushed the region’s electricity consumption to 133 million kilowatt-hours in 2025, exceeding the ordinary average of about 10 million kilowatt-hours for similar regions.This additional electricity output resulted in financial damages of about 20-25 million lari, or up to $9.4 million annually, according to Mdinaradze.He added that metering will be implemented both locally and on a larger scale across each village or settlement, helping identify the exact sources of illegal mining operations.He added that electricity in Svaneti will remain free for every consumer up to a predetermined quantity and that the new arrangements only serve to crack down on illegal mining operations.Related: Maestro launches mining-backed Bitcoin credit market for institutionsGeorgia offers cheap electricity due to abundant hydropower from the Caucasus Mountains, making it a popular destination for Bitcoin mining operations seeking cheap energy sources.Georgia has also attracted crypto-mining activity through low electricity costs and favorable tax treatment, including free industrial zones and value-added tax exemptions on certain crypto-related activities.Bitcoin mining company Bitfury was among the first major companies to establish operations in the country. In 2014, Bitfury built a 20-megawatt Bitcoin mining facility known as the Gori Data Center.Magazine: 6 weirdest devices people have used to mine Bitcoin and crypto 

Paris-based crypto data platform Kaiko acquired Amberdata, a US-focused digital asset data provider, as institutional investors demand broader market, derivatives and onchain analytics for digital assets.Kaiko said the deal will expand its institutional data stack and help the combined company serve banks, asset managers, hedge funds, exchanges and trading firms that need cleaner data across fragmented crypto markets, according to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph.The acquisition adds Amberdata’s derivatives analytics and artificial intelligence-powered research tools, including the GVOL options analytics platform, which Kaiko said had been one of the most requested capabilities from institutional clients.The transaction was finalized on Monday, but the size and terms of the deal remain confidential, Ambre Soubiran, CEO of Kaiko, told Cointelegraph.The deal marks Kaiko’s fifth acquisition and expands its effort to consolidate institutional-grade crypto market data, derivatives analytics and onchain infrastructure. Kaiko said the combined company will serve 250 institutional clients worldwide. Kaiko acquired onchain data infrastructure provider Cometh on May 20, which is licensed under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) as a crypto asset service provider.Kaiko platform homepage. Source: Kaiko.comIn February, Bloomberg announced a collaboration with Kaiko to make Bloomberg’s licensed financial data accessible directly within blockchain-native environments, expanding from traditional offchain databases to address the challenge of inconsistent data across tokenized markets, Cointelegraph reported.Reliable data is particularly important in markets linked to tokenized real-world assets to ensure that onchain assets mirror the pricing of the underlying financial instruments.Related: NYSE parent ICE pushes ‘level playing field’ for 24/7 onchain perpsCrypto data firms need to adhere to TradFi standards: Kaiko CEO Cryptocurrency data companies need to adhere to stricter TradFi-like standards to facilitate the growing institutional participation in the industry, Kaiko’s Soubiran told Cointelegraph, adding:“The growing participation from banks, asset managers, and hedge funds accelerates the demand, and this acquisition is the completion of a strategy that has been underway since day one.”Amberdata’s acquisition makes Kaiko the “only independent, globally regulated company that can serve every data need an institution has,” she added.LIT trading price, listing time, minute-by-minute. Source: KaikoEarlier in May, Kaiko’s data platform flagged concerning trading patterns suggesting that some traders are frontrunning crypto listing announcements on Robinhood, raising concerns that some market participants have access to non-public listing information or an “exceptionally reliable front-running methodology built on public signals.”Magazine: Polymarket seeks Japan entry, Harvard dumps entire ETH position: Hodler’s Digest, May 17 – 23