Tether abandoned plans to freeze its dollar-pegged USDT tokens on several older blockchains and is choosing instead to classify them as “unsupported,” according to an Aug. 29 statement.

The change applies to networks such as Bitcoin Cash, Kusama, EOS, and Algorand, among others. Users will still be able to move tokens across wallets, but Tether will no longer issue or redeem USDT on those platforms.

The shift came after weeks of community pushback over the company’s original plan, which would have locked tokens in place and left them non-transferable.

‘Unsupported’ classification

In June, Tether had outlined a transition that would begin Sept. 1, 2025, with all USDT on the affected blockchains frozen and excluded from redemptions.

The move was framed as a way to streamline operations by cutting off support for networks that accounted for a negligible share of the stablecoin’s activity. Under that plan, tokens would have remained visible on-chain but effectively stranded without any movement or redemption path.

Following sustained criticism from developers and users on smaller ecosystems like EOS and Algorand, Tether retreated from a hard freeze. The firm said the revised approach “aligns with its broader strategy” while avoiding reputational damage.

The compromise allows Tether to wind down low-volume chains without provoking backlash from users who would have been locked out of their assets.

Pivot toward Bitcoin

The announcement came just one day after Tether disclosed plans to issue a native USDT on Bitcoin using the RGB protocol.

Unlike wrapped tokens that rely on custodial bridges, RGB integrates directly with Bitcoin’s scripting and client-side validation, making USDT part of the Bitcoin ecosystem’s security model.

USDT remains most heavily concentrated on Ethereum and Tron, each with more than $80 billion in circulation, alongside smaller footprints on Solana and a few other networks.

The decision to drop support for legacy chains signals tightening resources on platforms with higher adoption while staking new ground on Bitcoin.

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08 August What can simplicity bring to liquid networks?

Simplicity is a formally verifiable smart contract language designed to bring versatility and programmability with Bitcoin, recently deployed on BlockStream’s Liquid Network. Unlike Ethereum’s EVM, Simplicity avoids global state and Turing’s integrity and instead focuses on predictable, auditable contracts. Its deterministic design allows developers to rigorously verify contract behavior and resource use before execution, making it particularly suitable for high paying applications such as contracts, vaults, and multi-party financial arrangements. With the introduction of high-level interfaces, simplicity and early deployment into liquids, simplicity represents a major leap into the safe and flexible smart contracts of Bitcoin’s wider ecosystem, continuing to remain true to the principles of conservatism, auditability and minimal trust.

What is simplicity?

Simplicity is a low-level programming and is a formally verifiable smart contract language designed to enhance Bitcoin programmership while maintaining the core principles of security and predictability. Recently active on BlockStream’s Liquid Network, Simplicity introduces a new way of creating contracts using recursive and no loops, allowing for rigorous static analysis and mathematical proof of accuracy. This is a noticeable deviation from traditional scripting environments such as Bitcoin Script and Ethereum’s EVM. This is not sufficiently expressive, bringing unpredictability and complexity. Instead, simplicity emphasizes determinism and auditability, consistent with Bitcoin’s conservative development philosophy.

Integration into liquid sidechains represents a significant advance in the network, allowing you to create sophisticated financial products such as programmable safes, multi-party controls, and threshold signature schemes. These features extend the utility of liquid networks beyond asset issuance and confidential transactions by supporting use cases that require stronger assurance properties. Simplicity works with Bitcoin’s UTXO model and implements self-contained logic, avoiding reliance on the global state of variability, thereby reducing the likelihood of unintended behavior and exploitation, and reducing the concerns that plague the more tolerant smart contract platform.

One important improvement that one of the simplicity brings to liquids is compatibility with formal methods. Developers can use Proof Assistants such as COQ to verify contracts before deployment, reducing the risk of bugs and vulnerabilities in production environments. The availability of high-level programming languages such as SimplicityHL further reduces the barriers to entry for developers and allows for wider adoption without compromising the inherent safety guarantees of the system. This places liquids as a viable environment for experimenting with smart contracts that prioritize accuracy over flexibility.

Looking ahead, simplicity could serve as a stepping stone to implementing secure, verifiable contract capabilities in the Bitcoin base layer if the community ultimately supports such upgrades with future soft forks. The presence of robust contracting capabilities that remain fixed in Bitcoin’s security model, even if left to liquids, could encourage more institutional and corporate use of Bitcoin adjoining infrastructure. In this way, simplicity not only advances the technical capabilities of liquids, but also contributes to conversations about the future direction of programmerism within the Bitcoin ecosystem.

What leaps does simplicity bring to liquid networks?

Simplicity began as an initiative in 2017 when Blockstream’s Russell O’Connor proposed a new paradigm for Bitcoin native smart contracts. Unlike the iterative improvements in Bitcoin script, simplicity was conceived as an alternative to clean slate, which aims to combine greater expressiveness with stronger formal guarantees. For many years, the Bitcoin development community has been thought to be supported by modest script upgrades, mature in the background, formal methods and theoretical rigor, with focus on scaling solutions such as Lightning. After eight years of development, BlockStream is now using this vision practically implementing simplicity in liquid networks, marking a major milestone in Bitcoin infrastructure.

The recent announcement of Simplicity’s integration into liquids represents the first time this language will be rolled out in production settings. Liquid offers a sidechain environment with faster finality and greater privacy, making it a testbed suitable for advanced contract capabilities. Simplicity’s debut here avoids the risks and trade-offs associated with deploying experimental features directly into the basic layer of Bitcoin. Deploying it into liquids also avoids the potential multi-year consensus battle needed to shake up the Bitcoin community and make changes to Bitcoin. In addition to the attribute that is attributed to being a low-level programming language, BlockStream also introduced SimplicityHl, a developer-friendly high-level programming language designed to resemble rust, focusing on Rast Code. This abstraction is key to making the platform accessible, auditable and practical for real-world application development.

Technically, Simplicity introduces several important innovations. It is tightened by the design, avoiding structures such as unfixed loops and variable global states, which are common causes of failure in other environments. All simplicity contracts can be statically analyzed for pre-execution accuracy, resource use, and possible outcomes. This makes it particularly suitable for applications that require high guarantees, such as vaults with programmable departure conditions, multi-party threshold signatures, or deterministic exchanges. The language also supports formal verification via the Proof Assistant, allowing developers to mathematically prove that their contracts behave as intended.

By simply expanding the liquid, the Bitcoin ecosystem acquires a programmable layer that can support complex financial primitives without compromising on the principles of predictability and auditability of Bitcoin. This opens the door to new use cases such as contracts, derivatives, pooled wallets, and tokenless dexes. This was previously relegated to a more tolerant, but risky environment. Although initial deployments are limited to liquids, the long-term goal is to gather community feedback, extend touring, and potentially move towards the testnet. Simplicity represents a change in how Bitcoin’s programmerism is considered. It is intentional, safe and based on formal logic.

How can Simplicity stack up compared to other smart contract solutions in Bitcoin?

Simplicity is distinguished from other Bitcoin smart contract solutions by providing a basic rethink rather than an incremental patch on essentially limited Bitcoin script. While Bitcoin Script remains limited to the scope and flexibility with most contracts restricted to basic signature verification templates, Simplicity introduces a more expressive and formal verifiable framework. This allows developers to define features without introducing Turing integrity. This avoids many of the risks associated with open-end logic. This makes it much more simplicity than native scripts and allows for use cases such as contracts, delegated control schemes, or threshold signatures that are otherwise tedious or impossible to implement in Bitcoin Layer 1.

Compared to proposed new opcodes (OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY or OP_CTV), Simplicity offers a wider, more unified design space. New opcodes can unlock certain features, but they are inherently narrow in scope and require a change in consensus for each extension. In contrast, simplicity defines a generic language that can encode various contract logic using a small defined set of compound primitives. This allows developers to build more complex programs that are less attractive and less attractive to protocol-level changes. In this sense, simplicity scales their capabilities horizontally rather than vertically through continuous patching.

Sapio and Simplicity differ fundamentally in design, functionality, and intended use. SAPIO is a high-level developer-friendly framework that compiles into Bitcoin scripts, relies on the proposed OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV) to implement contract structures, suitable for contracts within Bitcoin consensus constraints. In contrast, simplicity is a low-level language with its own independent execution model that is not compiled into Bitcoin scripts, allowing for greater expressiveness, accurate static analysis, and guaranteed termination. Sapio emphasizes Bitcoin usability and short-term developments, but simplicity is designed for formal, secure and complex contracts that are more suitable for environments such as sidechains that can support advanced features without a soft fork.

Finally, when evaluated alongside Bitcoin adjacency platforms such as RSK and Stack, both aim to bring Ethereum-style smart contracts to Bitcoin, but the simplicity is more conservative and takes a path lined with Bitcoin. RSK and Stacks often introduce their own consensus and account models with their own security and trust assumptions. The simplicity implemented in liquids and potentially Bitcoin itself adheres to Bitcoin’s UTXO structure and security model. The lack of recursion and global state reflects intentional design decisions to prioritize predictability, efficiency, and formal inference over general purpose programmerism. In this respect, simplicity does not attempt to replicate Ethereum, but rather creates a safer, dedicated alternative that is tailored to Bitcoin’s strengths.

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/what-can-simplicity-bring-to-liquid-networks/feed/ 0 52314 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/why-palo-alto-networks-stock-plummeted-by-more-than-5-today/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/why-palo-alto-networks-stock-plummeted-by-more-than-5-today/#respond Fri, 01 Aug 2025 01:21:48 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/why-palo-alto-networks-stock-plummeted-by-more-than-5-today/ Several analysts poured cold water on the company following its announcement of a huge purchase.

Palo Alto Networks (PANW -5.29%) made waves Wednesday when it announced a pricey acquisition, and on Thursday, investors were clearly getting worried about the cost. Analysts, too, started to express concern, with two even downgrading their recommendation on the shares.

With these headwinds blowing in its face, Palo Alto’s stock lost more than 5% of its value during the latter part of the trading day. That was a far steeper decline than the 0.4% slide of the benchmark S&P 500 index.

The $25 billion question

Palo Alto’s asset-to-be is peer cybersecurity company CyberArk Software, for which it agreed to pay roughly $25 billion in a cash-and-stock deal.

Image source: Getty Images.

CyberArk is a specialist in the niche area of identity security, and Palo Alto said that its ownership of the business will make the segment “a core pillar of the company’s multi-platform strategy.” The buyout has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies, and is anticipated to close in the second half of Palo Alto’s fiscal 2026.

Palo Alto certainly isn’t a poor company. Nevertheless, $25 billion is a major outlay. Several analysts don’t think that’s worth it, including that frequent downgrader, KeyBanc’s Eric Heath.

Well before market open Thursday, Heath enumerated several major strategic concerns about the deal, according to reports. He cast doubt on the potential synergies of the two businesses, and opined that customers are likely to prefer using a specialized company purely for identity security rather than a broad cybersecurity services provider, among other factors.

Unkind cuts?

Other analysts were similarly bearish, although they didn’t go as far as to downgrade their Palo Alto recommendations. They did reduce their price targets on the shares, however. That clutch of pundits included Mizuho’s Gregg Moskowitz, who cut $15 from his fair value assessment on the stock to $210 per share. He did maintain his outperform (i.e., buy) recommendation, however.

July 14th Bitfinex enables Xaut0 support on open networks (Ton)

Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands – July 14, 2025 – Bitfinex (https://www.bitfinex.com) today announced support for XAUT0 deposits and withdrawals on the Open Network (Ton). XAUT0 is a tokenized gold product aimed at expanding the accessibility of digital gold in high-performance, interoperable blockchain infrastructure.

With this latest integration, BitFinex customers will deposit and withdraw XAUT0 using the TON transport layer. TON is a high-throughput blockchain built to power the distributed internet, with designs that allow for secure, low-cost, and scalable transactions across the growing ecosystem. Ton aims to support millions of transactions per second and ultimately reach hundreds of millions of users.

Adding XAUT0 to TON will improve your ability to move tokenized gold across the network, taking advantage of the efficiency and interoperability of tons. Bitfinex customers can convert Xaut0 and Xaut and vice versa, using the platform’s built-in currency converter tool to convert in a 1:1 ratio.

“Integrating XAUT0 with an open network reflects our commitment to expand access to tokenized assets and supporting the development of decentralized financial infrastructure.” Anoush Bhasin, Bitfinex listing manager. “As the blockchain ecosystem matures, we are proud to offer our customers the flexible options to manage and transfer digital assets.

XAUT0 deposits and withdrawals at Ton opened at UTC at 10am on 14/07/2025.

To access xaut0 from bitfinex, go to https://www.bitfinex.com/.

Please note that Xaut0 is not directly issued or redemptionable by tether.

*All users of www.bitfinex.com are subject to Bitfinex Terms of Service (“TOS”). Please note that among other prohibited persons (as defined in TOS), US people (as defined in TOS) are strictly prohibited from directly or indirectly retaining, owning or operating their www.bitfinex.com account (as defined in TOS).

What is included in this press release is not an offer to buy and sell assets, including cryptocurrency. It is also not a solicitation, recommendation or approval of a trading course. The buying and selling of cryptocurrency on Bitfinex’s platform occurs based on TOS.

The content of this press release is of a general nature and does not address your personal standards or circumstances. The information provided in this press release should not be interpreted as financial, legal or other advice. You must conduct your own research and do not rely on the content mentioned in this press release. There are risks associated with the buying and selling of assets, including cryptocurrencies. For more information, see Bitfinex’s Risk Disclosure Statement at https://www.bitfinex.com/legal/exchange/risk.

About Bitfinex

Founded in 2012, Bitfinex is a digital token trading platform that provides cutting-edge services for traders and global liquidity providers. Bitfinex offers access to peer-to-peer financing, the OTC market and a wide range of digital token margin trading. Bitfinex’s strategy focuses on supporting experienced traders and liquidity providers around the world. For more information, please visit www.bitfinex.com.

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]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/bitfinex-enables-xaut0-support-on-open-networks-ton/feed/ 0 47758 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/tether-to-sunset-usdt-redemptions-on-5-legacy-networks-including-bitcoin-cash-algorand/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/tether-to-sunset-usdt-redemptions-on-5-legacy-networks-including-bitcoin-cash-algorand/#respond Sat, 12 Jul 2025 01:34:29 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/tether-to-sunset-usdt-redemptions-on-5-legacy-networks-including-bitcoin-cash-algorand/

Tether announced it will discontinue support for its USDT stablecoin on five “legacy” blockchains, including Omni Layer, Bitcoin Cash SLP, Kusama, EOS, and Algorand.

According to the July 11 announcement, the move will become effective Sept. 1, ending redemptions and freezing remaining tokens on those networks.

The decision comes as part of what the company called an “infrastructure optimization” strategy, aiming to align with shifting community usage trends and refocus resources toward more active and scalable blockchains.

The move finalizes a phased withdrawal that began over the past two years. In 2023, Tether halted minting on Bitcoin Cash, Kusama, and Omni Layer and ended minting on Algorand and EOS (recently rebranded as Vaulta) last June.

Until now, however, it had continued to redeem tokens on these networks.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said:

“As the digital asset ecosystem evolves, Tether remains committed to adapting alongside it. Sunsetting support for these legacy chains allows us to focus on platforms that offer greater scalability, developer activity, and community engagement, all key components for driving the next wave of stablecoin adoption.”

Tether emphasized that the five blockchains were instrumental in its early expansion but have seen a steep decline in USDT usage and trading volume in recent years. USDT remains the largest stablecoin in crypto with a market capitalization nearing $160 billion.

The company said it will prioritize emerging Layer 2 networks, such as the Lightning Network, and other high-utility chains to enhance interoperability, transaction speed, and ecosystem growth.

Tether advised customers to redeem their USDT holdings on the affected blockchains or request issuance on supported networks before the September cutoff. Holders not directly served by Tether can migrate through third-party service providers.

The stablecoin issuer added that it will continue exploring new integrations to broaden USDT accessibility globally and strengthen its infrastructure to meet evolving market demands.

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As crypto adoption accelerates, financial infrastructure providers are competing to enable access to digital assets, whilst avoiding the complexity of building internal trading infrastructure.

Kraken Embed solves this by delivering Crypto-Assistance (CAAS) solutions that enable banks, fintech and financial platforms to integrate regulated crypto transactions through a single, compliant, scalable API.

World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin is now operable across multiple blockchains through an integration with Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), the companies announced Friday.

That’s according to World Liberty Financial’s team, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov, and the son of U.S. President Donald Trump, Eric Trump, who announced the cross-chain capabilities at Consensus 2025.

USD1, a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin launched by the decentralized finance protocol inspired by Trump, has seen significant growth since its debut, reaching $2 billion in market capitalization. The stablecoin was used to close MGX’s $2 billion investment in Binance.

It still trails behind industry leaders Tether and Circle, whose leading stablecoins have a $151 billion and $60.6 billion market cap, respectively.

The token is backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries and fiat reserves held by BitGo Trust. The stablecoin was for now largely siloed within single blockchain ecosystems, yet the CCIP integration will allow it to move freely across blockchains.

Ethereum and BNB Chain are the first blockchains being integrated, though additional blockchain support is expected in the future. The integration, the firms say, tackles a long-standing hurdle in the stablecoin market: cross-chain security.

Historically, vulnerabilities in cross-chain bridges have cost users nearly $3 billion, they added.

“Chainlink’s battle-tested infrastructure delivers the institutional-grade security and extensive reach needed to deliver USD1 into the hands of millions across a growing number of active, on-chain ecosystems,” said Zach Witkoff, co-founder of World Liberty Financial.

“Chainlink is absolutely critical to merging traditional finance and decentralized finance, which has been our mission at World Liberty Financial ever since the start,” said World Liberty co-founder Zak Folkman. “We don’t see a world where DeFi exists in its own ecosystem and traditional finance carries on but we believe in a very short amount of time that they will, in fact, merge and just be the future of finance. So to that end, World Liberty Financial, our USD1 token is now bridgeable across chain thanks to the incredible people at CCIP which have enabled this cross chain compatibility, currently.”

The collaboration builds on an earlier integration where Chainlink’s price oracles were used to support World Liberty’s deployment of an Aave v3 instance.

Ye Zhang, the co-founder of Ethereum layer-2 network Scroll, has pushed back against calls for Ethereum to impose fees on layer-2 networks.

Zhang argued in a detailed social media post on April 2, that the proposal was harmful to Ethereum’s long-term vision. He called it a “toxic” approach that prioritizes short-term revenue over lasting ecosystem value.

According to Zhang, Ethereum’s strength lies not in extracting fees from rollups but in positioning ETH as the central asset across multiple Layer-2 (L2) ecosystems. He argued that taxing these networks mirrors corporate behavior and runs counter to the principles of decentralization that Ethereum stands for.

He emphasized that Ethereum’s value should not be measured by protocol income. Instead, the network should be considered an economic foundation for a growing rollup-centric ecosystem.

He noted:

“ETH’s real strength isn’t in protocol fees — it’s in becoming the hub asset across thousands of rollup ecosystems. That’s the future.”

Zhang explained that ETH’s advantage is its presence across major L2 platforms like Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync, and Scroll. Even on networks like StarkNet, that don’t use ETH for gas, he noted that the digital asset remains a key trading pair on decentralized exchanges.

Ethereum’s future

Considering this, Zhang outlined two possible directions for Ethereum. In one scenario, ETH evolves into a trusted store of value and a central hub for rollup activity.

According to Zhang:

“Every aligned L2 expands Ethereum’s surface area and social consensus. A thousand scalable rollups with ETH as the center > any monolithic chain.”

On the other hand, Ethereum could become focused on taxing L2 activity, which could drive them toward alternative data availability layers and reduce ETH’s influence in the broader blockchain landscape.

To avoid this, Zhang urged the community to focus on scaling execution and improving data availability infrastructure.

He called for a 1000x improvement in blob capacity and encouraged building out shared tools like cross-rollup liquidity bridges and interoperability solutions.

Zhang concluded:

“ETH wins by being the gravity, not the toll booth.”

Mentioned in this article

The agency’s report, published on March 18, highlights how criminals are taking advantage of these technologies to expand their operations, from online fraud to organized crime.

AI has made digital crimes more accessible by removing technical barriers. Generative AI tools allow criminals to create convincing messages in multiple languages. Europol warns that automation has amplified cybercrime, enabling large-scale phishing attacks and the creation of harmful content, including malware and explicit material.

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Another growing threat is the use of AI to generate deepfakes. Europol noted in the report, “The addition of AI-powered voice cloning and live video deepfakes amplifies the threat, enabling new forms of fraud, extortion, and identity theft”.

With these tools, criminals can fabricate realistic images, videos, and voices, which make scams harder to detect.

Beyond AI, Europol highlights the expanding role of cryptocurrency in criminal activities. While crypto was once primarily linked to cybercrime, it is also used in more traditional illegal operations, such as drug trafficking and human smuggling.

Additionally, criminals are developing new methods to steal digital assets, including cryptocurrency, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and mining equipment.

Meanwhile, more than 400 Hollywood creative figures, including Paul McCartney, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Rock, and Cynthia Erivo, sent an open letter to the Trump administration. What did the letter say? Read the full story.