Circle sent 63% of Q4 USDC reserve income to distributors, compressing 
margins. Circle Internet Financial reported fourth quarter earnings showing 
the stablecoin issuer paid $460.6 million in distribution and transaction 
costs against $733.4 million in reserve income, representing approximately 
63%…

Circle paid $461 million in distribution costs from $733 million reserve income in Q4

USDC and Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol are set to launch on the Morph 
network, expanding dollar-denominated stablecoin settlement for payment- 
focused infrastructure. Circle to Issue USDC on Morph, Expanding Stablecoin 
Settlement The rollout introduces canonical USDC on Morph, issued by Circle’s 
regulated affiliates, establishing the stablecoin as a digital settlement 
asset across the network. The issuance […]

Morph Integrates Circle’s USDC and CCTP for Payment Infrastructure

The incident highlights the critical need for robust internal controls and 
monitoring to prevent misuse of access in financial platforms.
The post ZachXBT alleges Axiom staff member abused internal access for insider 
trading appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

ZachXBT alleges Axiom staff member abused internal access for insider trading

The idea that Jane Street is single-handedly the reason why Bitcoin is not 
trading at $150,000 is the wrong frame, according to ProCap CIO and Bitwise 
advisor Jeff Park. In a X thread February 25, Park argued that the real issue 
is not one firm, but a structural feature of the US spot Bitcoin ETF system 
that gives all authorized participants unusual flexibility in how they hedge 
and settle trades. Is Jane Street Suppressing Bitcoin? Park’s core point is 
that the market has turned a question about Jane Street into a question about 
the ETF plumbing itself. On IBIT alone, he noted, the authorized participant 
roster includes Jane Street Capital, JPMorgan, Macquarie, Virtu Americas, 
Goldman Sachs, Citadel Securities, Citigroup, UBS and ABN AMRO. In his 
telling, that matters because APs are not ordinary short sellers. “The 
question deserves a precise answer—and the most important thing to understand 
upfront is that it is not really a question about Jane Street,” Park wrote. 
“It is a question about a structural feature of the Bitcoin ETF architecture 
that applies equally to every Authorized Participant in the ecosystem.” He 
added that the role of those institutions is “genuinely misunderstood, even 
amongst seasoned industry veterans.” The mechanism Park focused on is the AP 
exemption under Regulation SHO. In standard short selling, traders generally 
need to locate shares before shorting and face borrowing costs that create 
pressure to close the trade. APs, Park argued, sit in a different category 
because their creation and redemption rights effectively let them manufacture 
ETF shares without those same frictions. Related Reading: Bitcoin Yet To See 
Meaningful Capital Return, Glassnode Says “The practical consequence is 
significant: any AP can manufacture shares at will—no borrow cost, no capital 
conventionally tied up against the short, and no hard deadline to close the 
position beyond what is commercially reasonable,” he wrote. “This is the grey 
window: a regulatory carve-out designed for orderly ETF market-making that is, 
structurally speaking, indistinguishable from a regulatory arbitrage with 
unmatched duration.” That framing is important because Park is not claiming 
APs can simply press Bitcoin lower forever. His argument is narrower and more 
structural. If an AP is short IBIT and chooses to hedge with CME Bitcoin 
futures rather than buying spot BTC, then the normal arbitrage pathway that 
would force spot purchases becomes weaker. In that setup, the hedge can remain 
economically tight enough for market-making purposes while bypassing immediate 
spot demand. “The critical implication: if the hedge is futures rather than 
spot, the spot was never bought,” Park wrote. “The gap cannot close via the 
natural arb mechanism because the natural arb buyer chose not to buy spot.” He 
also cautioned that the separation is not frictionless, since basis traders 
work to keep futures and spot aligned, but said the basis risk becomes more 
meaningful in periods of stress. The recent shift to in-kind creations and 
redemptions, in Park’s view, removes another constraint that previously pushed 
activity into the spot market. Under the earlier cash-only model, APs had to 
deliver cash, which the fund’s custodian then used to buy Bitcoin. That 
created what Park called a “structural governor” because spot buying was a 
mechanical byproduct of creations. In-kind transfers change that. APs can now 
source Bitcoin directly, at times and from counterparties of their choosing, 
including OTC desks and negotiated transactions that may minimize visible 
market impact. Related Reading: 2 Bitcoin Price Levels Could Decide What 
Happens Next, Coinbase Says Even so, Park stopped short of endorsing outright 
market suppression claims. “The short answer is that no AP explicitly 
suppresses Bitcoin price,” he wrote. “What the AP structure can suppress is 
the integrity of the price discovery mechanism itself. Those are not the same 
thing—but the second is arguably more consequential than the first.” Other 
Experts Agree Senior ETF Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence Eric Balchunas 
commented: “The bogeyman is gone.. That&#8217;s the vibe rn on CT and in the price 
action today. I get it too, that big daily dump [at 10am] seemed to kill every 
rally and everyone&#8217;s spirit. Is eliminating it enough for a sustained rebound? 
I guess we&#8217;ll find out.” That distinction drew pushback. Monad founder Keone 
Hon said the theory does not hold up because a short futures hedge implies 
someone else is short futures and, on average, must hedge elsewhere, 
preserving the market-wide delta balance. Dave Weisberger also argued the 
claim does not hold “over any substantial time frame,” noting that futures 
converge to spot at expiry. Park did not dispute the accounting identity. What 
he disputed was whether that identity settles the practical question of how 
long trades can persist inside the system’s regulatory carve-outs. “To be 
clear, I don&#8217;t subscribe to the conspiracy theory that APs suppress price,” he 
wrote. “The conspiracy theory that I subscribe to, if there is one to be had, 
is that with infinite duration at zero cost of carry, funny things can 
happen.” Leading on-chain analyst James “Checkmate” Check agreed: “Jane Street 
didn&#8217;t suppress the Bitcoin price folks. HODLers all did. It&#8217;s just not that 
hard, stop summoning your inner salty goldbug but blaming manipulators. 
People. Sold. A. Fucktonne. Of. Spot. Bitcoin.” At press time, Bitcoin traded 
at $67,883. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Is Jane Street Why Bitcoin Isn’t At $150K? Expert Debunks The Myth

Cryptocurrency exchanges are moving to block scam-linked transfers before 
funds leave their platforms as fraud losses continue to climb.

Cryptocurrency price in KRW