BNB breaks through the $700 mark

Usual Protocol, an up-and-coming decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that has seen a remarkable rise over the past months, faced community backlash on Friday after a tweak in the protocol's yield-generating token triggered a sell-off on secondary markets.Amid the turmoil, the protocol's USD0++ token, which represents a locked-up – or staked – version of its $1-anchored stablecoin USD0, fell briefly below 90 cents from $1 on decentralized marketplace Curve. The protocol's governance token, USUAL, plummeted as much as 17% through the day before recovering some of the losses.The selloff was caused by a change in the redemption mechanism of USD0++ token introduced by the team on Thursday that caught investors and liquidity providers off-guard.By design, USD0 is backed by short-term government securities to keep its price at $1. Stakers on Usual receive USD0++ that comes with a four-year lock-up period, meaning that investors are locking up their funds without being able to redeem in exchange for rewards earned in the form of the protocol's USD0 and USUAL tokens. Yield farmers rushed in, catapulting the protocols total value locked (TVL), a key DeFi metric, to $1.87 billion earlier this week from less than $300 million in October.However, the new feature called "dual-path exit" will allow investors to redeem the locked-up tokens early at a 0.87 USD0 floor price, or at par, by giving up a part of the rewards earned, calling the 1:1 exchange rate into question.The abrupt implementation drew criticism across DeFi users for changing the design without warning. In certain liquidity pools, the token's price was hardcoded to worth $1, causing havoc among borrowers and liquidity providers."Did they just allow degens to jump in at 1:1 and then rug the USD0++?," prominent DeFi analyst Ignas said in an X post. "They pushed for the largest USD0/USD0++ pool on Curve knowing all well that USD0++ shouldn't trade at 1:1.""DeFi continues learning the most important truth about pegs: a peg is a story about why two things that are not the same are interchangeable for each other," noted Patrick McKenzie, advisor to payments firm Stripe.The Usual team said in a statement that the design change with the early unstaking mechanism was communicated in advance from October. The protocol will also activate the revenue switch starting on Monday and start distributing the protocol's earnings to governance token holders who stake their coin for longer-term (USUALx)."The current situation regarding USD0++ stems from a misunderstanding of the protocol’s mechanisms along with a communication that should have been better articulated," the statement reads. "We apologize and we’ll continue to do our best to communicate transparent information to users."The episode is another lesson for crypto investors about the potential risks of DeFi products that entice users with high-yields via token incentives and rewards flywheels. "Users who are taking risk need to know what the exact rules are and be able to trust that they won't change, otherwise it can result in market panic," Rob Hadick, general partner at venture capital firm Dragonfly, told CoinDesk. "We should be thankful this happened now, before the protocol became a risk to the broader DeFi ecosystem."Still, USD0++ traded recently at 0.91 USD0 in the Curve pool, while the protocol's total value locked, a key DeFi metric, dropped below $1.6 billion.

Enforcement Director Ian McGinley is leaving the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in a week, ending a relatively short tenure that saw some high-profile crypto cases.He arrived at the agency in February 2023, a month before the CFTC sued Binance and then-CEO Changpeng Zhao for violating U.S. commodities laws. During his tenure, he also oversaw the conclusion of the enforcement work against collapsed global platform FTX, which he characterized as the largest recovery of dollars for victims in CFTC history. The agency has since pursued actions against KuCoin and Falcon Labs, among other projects. In a 2023 speech, McGinley addressed the agency's special focus on digital assets, saying, "The CFTC has risen to the challenge in a remarkable fashion."In the statement announcing his January 17 departure, "establishing the CFTC as a premier law enforcement agency for digital asset enforcement" was listed first among the priorities of his tenure. The CFTC's cousin agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, usually gets more attention (and industry criticism) for its crypto enforcement work, though both have pursued dozens of major cases.McGinley's departure opens a path for Republicans to redirect the agency's enforcement work when a Trump appointee takes over the chairmanship. Trump's transition crew has reportedly eyed a long list of potential CFTC chiefs but hasn't pulled the trigger as quickly as it did on the marquee opening atop of the Securities and Exchange Commission. However, if crypto legislation makes headway in 2025, the CFTC could overtake the SEC' as the dominant agency overseeing U.S. digital assets markets.Sitting Republican commissioners, Caroline Pham and Summer Mersinger, have been touted as potential candidates for the almost-open chairmanship, alongside former Commissioner Brian Quintenz, currently Head of Policy at a16z crypto.

The current price of Binance BTC is $94803.38, with a 3.00% increase in the past 24 hours. Among them, the total liquidation amount of contracts across the entire network in the past 24 hours was 281 million US dollars, with the main liquidation being short orders and BTC liquidation being 74.85 million US dollars (26.54%). The data is for reference only.

Some crypto industry participants criticized new rules proposed by the CFPB on Friday, saying it was unclear whether they would impact noncustodial service providers. Billionaire co-lead of the Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk previously said he would “delete” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau founded by Elizabeth Warren.

As crypto fan Donald Trump prepares to take the reins of the government, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has pitched new regulations that would have a significant impact on stablecoin issuers and wallet providers, though the proposal's future remains in question.The CFPB took the first procedural step to open a proposal to public comment on Friday that would set up a framework to apply the Electronic Fund Transfer Act to virtual wallets and stablecoins – the digital tokens tied to the value of a steady asset, commonly the U.S. dollar. While that has heavy implications to the way U.S. stablecoin firms and crypto wallet providers would do business, it's at a preliminary stage with Trump about to arrive at the White House with the power to appoint a new CFPB chief.Unlike other agency heads, such as those at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, CFPB Director Rohit Chopra appears unlikely to step down voluntarily. Since the agency's creation after the 2008 global financial meltdown, its leaders have often occupied a more aggressive posture than other regulators, and Republican lawmakers have actively sought to weaken the CFPB's powers.In 2020, the Supreme Court confirmed the president can fire and replace the director at will – a power Trump is expected to exercise.This last-minute regulatory effort would have to survive the arrival of a Trump-appointed leader before it could be finalized and put into effect. Even if this were a final rule, the Republican-led Congress would have a chance to erase it with its Congressional Review Act authority.Were it to survive, the regulation as proposed – and now opened for a public comment period – looks at stablecoins as a payment mechanism. The existing law's reference to "funds" should include stablecoins, the proposal suggests, and it could arguably also include other more volatile cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. "Under this interpretation, the term 'funds' would include stablecoins, as well as any other similarly-situated fungible assets that either operate as a medium of exchange or as a means of paying for goods or services," the proposal stated.It additionally said the law's reach into financial "accounts" should include "virtual currency wallets that can be used to buy goods and services or make person-to-person transfers," specifically if they're being used for retail transactions and not the buying and selling of securities or commodities. Institutions who provide such accounts would fall under regulatory requirements to make consumer disclosures and provide protections against unauthorized transactions and the ability to cancel improper transfers. Those government demands could run afoul of the way crypto operations are often set up – such as in decentralized finance (DeFi) – as person-to-person platforms without outside interference, or with wallet technology provided for users to run themselves.Consumer advocacy group Better Markets applauded the agency's proposal on Friday. "The CFPB’s proposal today extends the EFTA protections to non-bank digital payment mechanisms," Dennis Kelleher, the group's president, said in a statement. "That would not only protect consumers, but also level the playing field among digital payment mechanisms whether involving a bank checking or savings account or another consumer asset account such as those used by crypto and video game firms."The Cato Institute's Jack Solowey, a policy analyst at the conservative think tank, countered in a post on social-media site X that the CFPB's arguments for this rule are "embarrassingly conclusory," without even dealing with decentralized ledgers and self-hosted wallets.Bill Hughes, director of global regulatory matters at Consensys, the Ethereum development company, also railed against the move on X, suggesting, "Add this to the list of 'law by decree' problems that need to be fixed."