Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange, has acquired a minority stake in stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Financial. The two companies also dissolved their Centre Consortium partnership, which issued USD Coin (USDC), the world’s second-largest stablecoin. As part of the move, Circle will bring issuance and governance of USDC fully in-house. Additionally, USDC will now be supported on six more blockchains, bringing the total number of supported blockchains to 15. Coinbase did not give Circle cash for the stake, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The U.S. Department of Justice and Sam Bankman-Fried filed competing sets of jury instructions for the October trial of the FTX founder a day before he is set to be arraigned on a new superseding indictment. Bankman-Fried faces seven different charges, ranging from wire fraud, securities fraud, and commodities fraud conspiracy to money laundering allegations, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
Social platform Friend.tech, which lets holders buy shares of people who hold an account on X, formerly known as Twitter, and grants the buyers certain privileges, has surged to more than 100,000 addresses since its Aug. 10 launch. The platform has generated over $25 million in fees since launch, according to DefiLlama. A Dune Analytics dashboard corroborates the finding, pegging the number of unique users to at least 80,000, with 15,000 users added since Sunday.