Autor Cointelegraph by Amin Haqshanas

Three of DeFi’s relatively young applications, including Hyperliquid, EdgeX and Pump.fun, have distributed a combined $96.3 million to token holders over the past 30 days, as the sector’s focus shifts to actual earnings.Hyperliquid led the pack, generating $50.95 million in revenue over the period, all of which went directly to token holders with zero spent on incentives, according to data from DefiLlama. Pump.fun came in second with $22.09 million returned to holders out of $38.81 million in total revenue. EdgeX followed with $23.26 million distributed to holders from $8.26 million in protocol revenue, suggesting that the platform is drawing on reserves or alternative income streams to reward holders.On an annualized basis, Hyperliquid has generated $945.87 million in revenue over the past year, all returned to holders, while Pump.fun sits at $481.15 million and EdgeX at $236.42 million.Among other major protocols, Chainlink returned $4.63 million to holders, Aerodrome $3.53 million and Uniswap $3.29 million across 44 chains. PancakeSwap generated $3.94 million in revenue but returned $2.48 million to holders while spending $905,260 on incentives.Related: DeFi can freeze stolen funds, but not everyone agrees it shouldCrypto community now focuses on revenueThe data comes as revenue is becoming the metric that matters most in crypto, with token holders pushing protocols to justify their valuations through actual earnings rather than transaction volumes or network growth figures.“Nobody cares that your chain does 10x the TPS anymore,” wrote Robbie Klages, co-founder of The Rollup, referring to a blockchain’s measure of transactions per second. “The market is ‘show me the money right now.’ Treat it like a business not a network growth thesis,” he added.Top DeFi protocols by Holders Revenue. Source: DefiLlamaAnother X user wrote that the shift from narrative to earnings is “permanent now,” warning that protocols unable to show real revenue will be valued like pre-revenue startups in a rate hike environment, a reference to the kind of sharp devaluations that hit speculative assets when capital gets expensive.Related: Aave-Linked DeFi United Details rsETH Recovery PlanDeFi is becoming backend for onchain economyAndre Cronje, founder of the popular DeFi protocol Yearn.Finance, said that DeFi in 2026 looks less like a speculative playground and more like functioning financial infrastructure. He noted that stablecoins have grown into a $320 billion market led by Tether and Circle, decentralized exchanges are processing over $160 billion in monthly spot volume and perpetual DEXs are handling $540 billion monthly.Cronje added that lending protocols, including Aave, Morpho and Maple Finance, are sitting on $28 billion in active loans, while real-world assets are increasingly being used as onchain collateral. “DeFi is no longer just competing for APY. It is becoming the backend for the onchain economy,” he wrote on X.Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs — Mid-2026

The value of cryptocurrency held by South Korean investors more than halved over the past year, falling from 121.8 trillion won ($83.3 billion) at the end of January 2025 to 60.6 trillion won ($41.4 billion) by the end of February 2026.Daily trading volumes across the country’s five major exchanges, including Upbit, Bithumb, Korbit, Coinone and Gopax, also took a hit, collapsing to $3 billion by February compared to $11.6 billion in December 2024, Korean outlet The Chosun Daily reported, citing data the Bank of Korea submitted to Rep. Cha Gyu-geun of the Rebuilding Korea Party.Won deposits held at exchanges, a proxy for investor dry powder, also fell from 10.7 trillion won at end-2024 to 7.8 trillion won. The drop is attributed to a combination of falling crypto prices and capital flowing into the stock market.Stablecoins bucked the trend. Holdings climbed from $60 million in July 2024 to a peak of $597 million in December before easing to $41 million in February, a far smaller decline than the broader crypto market.Related: South Korea seeks 20-year sentence for Delio CEO over $169M crypto fraudTighter AML rules threaten to push investors awayThe market contraction comes as regulators prepare to tighten oversight. Financial authorities plan to implement revised AML rules in August that would require crypto transactions above 10 million won involving overseas exchanges or private wallets to be automatically flagged as suspicious.Top Korean exchanges by volume. Source: CoinGeckoIndustry body DAXA has pushed back, arguing the rule is disproportionate and could drive users to offshore platforms like Binance. The industry body said the proposal could increase suspicious transaction reports from South Korea’s five largest exchanges by 85 times, from about 63,000 cases last year to over 5.4 million, making compliance difficult in practice.Debate over the government’s planned 22% crypto tax, set for 2027, is also intensifying. On Thursday, South Korea’s Finance Ministry confirmed for the first time that a 22% tax on crypto gains will take effect as scheduled on January 1, 2027.Related: Bithumb wins temporary court stay on South Korea suspension: ReportSamsung SDS to build South Korea’s blockchain securities platformAs Cointelegraph reported, Samsung SDS has won a contract to build and operate a blockchain-based securities platform for South Korea’s Korea Securities Depository (KSD), with the project expected to be completed by February 2027.The move comes ahead of South Korea’s broader push to build market infrastructure for tokenized assets ahead of a new legal framework taking effect in early 2027.Magazine: AI-driven hacks could kill DeFi — unless projects act now

Trump Media & Technology Group posted a $405.9 million net loss in the first quarter of 2026, up from $31.7 million a year earlier, amid growing unrealized losses on its crypto holdings.The parent company of Truth Social booked $244 million in unrealized losses on its Bitcoin position and a further $108.2 million in investment losses tied mostly to equity securities, with nearly $370 million of the quarter’s total losses stemming from digital asset and equity markdowns, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).The losses mostly trace back to Bitcoin purchases made at last summer’s market peak. Trump Media bought roughly 9,500 Bitcoin at an average cost of around $108,519 per coin. By March 31, the company held 9,542 Bitcoin with a cost basis of $1.13 billion but a fair value of just $647 million, a gap of nearly $500 million. The position has since recovered somewhat, now worth around $770 million with Bitcoin trading above $80,000.The company also holds 756 million Cronos (CRO) tokens, purchased for $113.9 million as part of a Crypto.com deal last year, which were worth just $53 million at quarter-end. Of the firm’s Bitcoin holdings, 4,260 BTC is pledged as collateral for convertible notes and another 2,000 BTC is held against covered call options to hedge against price swings.Related: UAE firm bought 49% of Trump-linked crypto startup for $500MCash flow stays positive despite mounting crypto lossesDespite the losses, Trump Media still generated $17.9 million in operating cash flow during the quarter, helped by selling options tied to its pledged Bitcoin. Total financial assets reached $2.1 billion, three times the level from a year ago.Revenue came in at $871,200, up just 6% from $821,200 in Q1 2025, with media revenue of $810,100 and $61,100 in management fees from Truth.Fi ETF offerings.The results arrive after a turbulent stretch for the company. CEO Devin Nunes stepped down on April 22, and the stock has lost more than 90% of its value since peaking at $97.54 in early 2022, last changing hands around $8.93.Trump Media shares. Source: Yahoo! FinanceRelated: Trump-linked American Bitcoin energizes 11,298 new ASICsAmerican Bitcoin posts $82 million quarterly lossAs Cointelegraph reported, American Bitcoin, the crypto mining company co-founded by Eric Trump and backed by Donald Trump Jr., posted an $81.7 million net loss in the first quarter of 2026, narrowing from a $100.6 million loss a year earlier.Revenue came in at $62.1 million, a 400% jump from $12.3 million in Q1 2025 but a step down from $78.3 million in the prior quarter, missing analyst estimates by 17%. The company also reported a loss of 8 cents per share, well above Wall Street’s estimate of 1 cent.Despite the miss, American Bitcoin mined a record 817 Bitcoin during the quarter, up from 783 in Q4 2025.Magazine: Trump’s crypto ventures raise conflict of interest, insider trading questions

Bitcoin miner TeraWulf posted a net loss of $427 million in the first quarter of 2026, up from the $61.4 million loss recorded in the same period a year earlier.Total revenue for the quarter came in at $34 million, with high-performance computing (HPC) lease revenue accounting for $21 million, roughly 60% of the total and a 117% jump from the prior quarter, according to a Friday announcement. Bitcoin mining revenue fell 50% to around $13 million.The HPC revenue was driven by 60 megawatts of operational critical IT capacity at Lake Mariner, one of North America’s largest HPC campuses, leased to Core42. TeraWulf is also coordinating infrastructure delivery with Fluidstack and Google, with additional capacity buildings on track for delivery in 2026.  The company ended the quarter with approximately $3.1 billion in cash.“Our capital structure is designed to align long-term financing with contracted cash flows, supporting disciplined growth while maintaining financial flexibility,” chief financial officer Patrick Fleury said.Related: CoreWeave shows how crypto-era infrastructure quietly became AI’s backboneTeraWulf accelerates AI transitionIn October last year, TeraWulf announced a 25-year lease deal with Fluidstack, backed by Google, worth around $9.5 billion in contracted revenues, an expansion of an earlier 10-year commitment. The miner is also building out a national pipeline of power-advantaged sites, including a newly acquired 480 MW site in Hawesville, Kentucky, a 300 MW project in Lansing, New York, and a 210 MW site in Morgantown, Maryland, with potential to scale to 1 gigawatt.“We are building a power-advantaged platform that we believe is increasingly differentiated in a market constrained by access to power,” CEO Paul Prager said, noting that the company’s Abernathy joint venture, a 168 MW HPC project under a 25-year lease, remains on track for delivery in the fourth quarter of 2026.Shares of WULF closed the day down 2.6%, though the stock has gained more than 105% since the start of the year and is up over 30% in the past month.TeraWulf shares decline. Source: Yahoo! FinanceRelated: Bitcoin Miner Bitdeer Liquidates Entire BTC Treasury, Holdings Fall to ZeroRiot’s data center business generates $33 million in revenueAs Cointelegraph reported, Riot Platforms posted $167.2 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2026, with its newly launched data center business contributing $33.2 million, helping offset a decline in Bitcoin mining revenue, which fell to $111.9 million from $142.9 million a year earlier.Bitcoin miners are pivoting to AI infrastructure as shrinking margins push the industry toward more predictable revenue, with Core Scientific, MARA Holdings, Hive, Hut 8 and Iren converting mining facilities into data centers or acquiring AI compute assets.Magazine: Bitcoin will not hit $1M by 2030, says veteran trader Peter Brandt

A Manhattan federal judge has allowed Arbitrum DAO to move $71 million in frozen Ether to Aave, clearing the path for the DeFi protocol’s recovery effort following a North Korea-linked exploit.Judge Margaret Garnett of the Southern District of New York issued the order on Friday, modifying a restraining notice that had locked the assets inside Arbitrum DAO. The modification permits an onchain governance vote to send the funds to a wallet controlled by Aave LLC, and explicitly protects anyone who participates in the transfer from being held in violation of the freeze.The order still keeps the terrorism victims’ legal claim on the funds, meaning Aave can’t use the funds freely and could be forced to hand them over if the court ultimately rules in the terrorism victims’ favor.Judge allows Arbitrum to move funds to Aave. Source: CourtlistenerThe decision came after Arbitrum delegates showed strong support for the move through an off-chain Snapshot vote as part of Aave’s broader recovery plan following last month’s North Korea-linked rsETH exploit. Any actual transfer still requires a separate binding onchain governance vote.Related: Arbitrum vote to release $71M in frozen Kelp exploit ETH set to passAave asks court to lift freeze on fundsLast week, Aave filed an emergency motion in a New York court seeking to vacate a restraining notice that had blocked Arbitrum DAO from transferring the funds to victims of the Kelp DAO exploit. The notice was served by Gerstein Harrow LLP, which represents families holding $877 million in unpaid terrorism judgments against North Korea and claims the funds belong to its clients because North Korean hackers stole them during the April 18 hack.Aave pushed back hard, arguing that a thief doesn’t gain lawful ownership of stolen property and that attributing the hack to North Korea relies on little more than internet speculation. It also warned that if the court upholds the restraining notice, it could deter future DeFi recovery efforts and give bad actors a roadmap to exploit legal uncertainty following hacks.Gerstein Harrow has previously pursued similar claims. In January, they sued Railgun DAO, alleging the privacy protocol was used to launder proceeds from prior North Korean hacks, including the $1.5 billion Bybit exploit.Related: Aave deposits fall by $15B as Kelp exploit sparks flight from DeFi lenderKelp exploit leaves $174 million hole in rsETH backingThe Kelp DAO exploit left rsETH’s backing with a significant shortfall. The hack caused 116,500 rsETH to be released on Ethereum without a corresponding burn on the source side, leaving only 40,373 rsETH in the adapter contract against confirmed backing for 152,577, a gap of roughly 76,127 rsETH, worth around $174.5 million at current prices.The 30,765 ETH frozen by Arbitrum has been flagged as a meaningful step toward closing that gap, with proponents arguing that even partial restoration of rsETH’s backing would help stabilize conditions for users across Arbitrum and the wider DeFi ecosystem.Magazine: 53 DeFi projects infiltrated, 50M NEO tokens could be ‘given back’: Asia Express