Autor Cointelegraph By Jesse Coghlan

AI Financial Corp., a World Liberty Financial token treasury company, said a deficit in working capital and liabilities is casting significant doubt on its ability to continue over the next year. The company, which has World Liberty CEO Zach Witkoff as its chairman, reported a net loss of $271.5 million in its first-quarter results on Monday, compared to losses of $2.4 million a year ago.The firm, formerly known as ALT5 Sigma, said that as of March 28, it had a working capital deficit of around $5.5 million, with $39.1 million in liabilities against $32.2 million in assets.“These conditions raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern within one year after the date these financial statements are issued,” AI Financial said.AI Financial was one of the many companies swept up in the craze of crypto-buying public firms, becoming a buyer of World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the token of the Trump family-backed crypto platform of the same name.To meet its obligations, AI Financial said it held 7.3 billion WLFI tokens at a value of $703.4 million as of March 28, which it could use to firm up its liquidity.However, the value of AI Financial’s WLFI holdings has fallen by a third since late December, when the fair value of the tokens was at over $1 billion, leading to an unrealized loss of $348.3 million. The company paid nearly $1.46 billion to acquire its WLFI holdings.AI Financial added that it also borrowed nearly $15 million from World Liberty in January, drawing down the cash under a loan agreement with the Trump-linked firm, which it said it could use in a share repurchase program and to buy more WLFI tokens.Shares in AI Financial (AIFC) ended trading down nearly 6.3% on Tuesday at 85 cents, extending its 10% drawdown over trading on Monday.Source: Google FinanceRelated: Trump-backed Truth Social pulls bids for crypto ETFsThe company’s stock has fallen by nearly 87.5% over the past 12 months. It first looked to become a WLFI treasury company in early August after closing a $1.5 billion direct offering and private placement led by World Liberty Financial.At the time of the deal closing, Witkoff became AI Financial’s chairman, while World Liberty co-founder Zak Folkman became a board observer.US President Donald Trump’s son, Eric Trump, joined the company’s board, but was quietly removed from the leadership section of its website late last month. Magazine: Trump’s crypto ventures raise conflict of interest, insider trading questions

Crypto exchange Kraken has reportedly laid off some of its staff as a cost-cutting measure, which could delay its planned initial public offering in the US until next year.The company, whose corporate name is Payward, laid off about 150 workers due to efficiencies from deploying artificial intelligence across the business, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing a person familiar with the matter.The person said AI is being used more extensively throughout Kraken, but the company is not planning further job cuts at the moment.Crypto-related companies have cut more than 5,000 jobs so far this year, with many citing increased efficiencies from AI as a reason for the layoffs. Block Inc. undertook the biggest round of layoffs by a crypto company so far in 2026, cutting 4,000 staff or about half its workforce in February in an AI-driven cutback.A decline in crypto prices since late last year has also stung public crypto companies’ balance sheets, with many reporting losses in their first-quarter earnings.Kraken’s cuts have reportedly pushed back its plan to go public sometime this year, with the company now eyeing a debut in the US in 2027.Cointelegraph reached out to Kraken but did not receive an immediate response. Kraken’s plans to go public have been on and off for months. In November, the company confidentially filed with US regulators to go public before pausing its IPO in March due to a declining crypto market.Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi reiterated Kraken’s confidential IPO filing last month when he was asked onstage at a conference whether there were plans to take the company public soon, but he did not share a timeline.Source: SemaforRelated: How AI became crypto’s favorite reason to cut staffThe layoffs at Kraken come in the same week that crypto data company Dune said it laid off 25% of its workforce, citing a need to restructure its business and focus on its core products.Coinbase cut 700 employees, or about 14% of its workforce, earlier this month, on May 5, citing an increase in AI use. Rival crypto exchanges Gemini and Crypto.com also laid off 200 and about 180 employees, respectively, earlier this year, both citing the rising use of AI.Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs: Mid-2026

The US Senate’s crypto market structure bill could take until August to pass and risks not advancing at all if lawmakers cannot pass it before the midterms, said Greg Cipolaro, head of research at financial services firm NYDIG.Patrick Witt, a senior White House crypto adviser, said earlier this month that he was targeting July 4 for the Senate’s crypto bill to pass, saying there was enough time for a Senate markup, floor vote and House vote. “This may represent an aspirational benchmark rather than a fixed legislative deadline,” Cipolaro said in a note on Friday. “The realistic window, however, is June through early August.”The crypto market structure bill would outline how US watchdogs would regulate crypto and is seen as one of the most important pieces of crypto legislation this year. However, it has been marred by delays as lawmakers and lobbyists have sought to add or amend provisions around stablecoins and government officials’ use of crypto, among other issues.The bill passed a long-delayed markup in the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, which voted largely along party lines to advance it to the Senate floor, where it will need 60 votes to avoid prolonged debate and pass.Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott, pictured at the markup. Source: US SenateRepublicans hold a 53-seat Senate majority and will need at least seven Democrats on board to pass the bill quickly, but some Democrats are concerned that the bill does not go far enough in preventing crime and sanctions evasion.Cipolaro said Congress has a recess from late July to early September and will then return to a period ahead of the midterm elections in November, when Senate leadership “is unlikely to schedule a contested 60-vote floor fight.”“If the bill misses that window, the highest-probability remaining pathway becomes a post-election lame-duck session, available only if Republicans hold the Senate and Majority Leader [John] Thune prioritizes it over government funding deadlines,” he added.Current polling and predictions show a tight race for control of the Senate, with some forecasts showing Republicans with a slight edge, while others put key seats as tossups that could put Democrats in control of the chamber.Cipolaro said that if Democrats gain control of the Senate, the current Republican-backed crypto market structure bill is unlikely to advance in the next Congress when it begins in January.“Congressional negotiators face a tradeoff between accepting an imperfect bipartisan framework in 2026 versus risking a substantially different legislative environment after the midterms.”Cipolaro said that if the bill is passed and signed into law, crypto markets would get a boost as major institutions would be confident enough to invest in the space because of the legal clarity. It would also grant regulatory certainty to Bitcoin, classifying it as a commodity under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and closing “the last significant regulatory overhang for Bitcoin as an institutional asset class,” he added.However, Cipolaro said the bill could fail because of stalled negotiations over provisions regarding ethics or decentralized finance enforcement, or because of scheduling delays, which would mean the crypto industry would continue to operate under “permanent jurisdictional ambiguity.”Magazine: Clarity Act risks repeat of Europe’s mistakes, crypto lawyer warns

Shares in the US crypto exchange Bullish fell on Thursday after the company’s first-quarter earnings missed analysts’ top and bottom line expectations.Bullish’s adjusted revenue for the quarter ended March 31 was $92.8 million, up from $62.4 million a year ago, but below Wall Street expectations of $95.4 million.The company reported a net loss of $604.9 million, deeper than its $348.6 million loss in the prior-year period. Its adjusted earnings per share were 13 cents, below estimates of 17 cents.Bullish is the latest crypto company to report an earnings miss after the wider crypto market fell from January to March, with Bitcoin falling 24% over the quarter, according to CoinGecko.Shares of Bullish (BLSH) fell 5.6% during Thursday’s trading session to close at $39.46, then rose 1% in after-hours trading.Shares in Bullish dropped on Thursday on the company’s first-quarter results. Source: Google FinanceBullish’s stock has lost 43% since the company went public in August but is up 4.2% so far this year.The company told investors its recent $4.2 billion acquisition of Equiniti would allow it to bring to market a “regulated transfer agent with end-to-end tokenization infrastructure” and claimed to be the second-place exchange for Bitcoin options, two areas that are currently seeing a surge of interest.Related: Strategy’s Bitcoin engine faces $28B STRC ceiling: Delphi Digital“With the proposed acquisition of Equiniti, we will have all three elements required to become a powerhouse leading the blockchain era,” said Bullish CEO Tom Farley. “End-to-end tokenization services, a unified transfer agent ledger, and broad blue-chip issuer relationships.”Bullish’s results came the same day rival exchange Gemini reported a mixed first quarter, with revenue of $50.3 million missing estimates while its net loss of $109 million exceeded expectations.Coinbase also missed consensus after it reported its first-quarter earnings last week, with $1.41 billion in revenue missing expectations of $1.5 billion, while its $394.1 million net loss, its second consecutive quarterly loss, also fell short of forecasts.Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs: Mid-2026

Crypto data company Dune said it is laying off 25% of its workforce, citing a need to restructure its business to focus on its core products.“We’re restructuring Dune to sharpen our focus around the core data products thousands of customers across the crypto industry rely on,” Dune co-founder and CEO Fredrik Haga posted to X on Thursday. “That unfortunately means we’ve let 25% of the team go this week.”Haga did not share the number of staff who were laid off. The company’s LinkedIn shows about 150 employees. Haga said the company remained “well capitalized” and that Dune was “all-in” on artificial intelligence and growing institutional interest in crypto.Layoffs and closures are rising across the crypto and tech sectors this year, with many companies citing AI as both a help and a hindrance.Just this month, Coinbase cut 700 employees, or about 14% of its workforce, on May 5, citing an increase in AI use, while the crypto news outlet DL News shuttered on Friday, citing part of the reason was decreased reach in internet search results due to AI aggregation.Haga said that Dune’s Model Context Protocol, or MCP, which allows AI to interact with the platform, means “teams and agents can now build dashboards and workflows without needing to know anything” about data infrastructure or SQL, a programming language for databases.Source: Fredrik HagaHe added the company would also be “investing heavily” in its data products and services for institutions, as the company sees “currencies, stocks, bonds, commodities and more” are moving onchain.Related: How AI became crypto’s favorite reason to cut staffDune’s cutbacks add to the more than 5,000 jobs eliminated at major crypto companies this year.Block Inc. undertook the biggest round of layoffs of a crypto company so far in 2026, halving its workforce and cutting 4,000 staff in February.The crypto exchanges Gemini and Crypto.com also laid off 200 and around 180 employees, respectively, earlier this year, with each citing the rising use of AI for efficiency gains.Layoffs are also widespread in the US tech sector, with 137 companies cutting nearly 109,000 jobs so far in 2026, according to data from Layoffs.fyi.Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs: Mid-2026