Blockzeit

Jensen Huang steps down as NVIDIA CEO. He also gave up his seat on the board after admitting to a romantic affair with a suspected Chinese spy, Alice Huang.

Collette Kress, Nvidia’s Chief Financial Officer, is serving as interim CEO during the transition.

$NVDA fell by double-digit percentage points in pre-market trading after the news broke.

Bitcoin (bitcoin:native) was initially unfazed by the news but is expected to follow Nvidia’s short-term trajectory as the public digests the latest developments.

Megaspeed, the Singapore-based cloud computing company connected to Alice Huang, has committed to cooperating with ongoing investigations.

In its first statement after Huang's admission, Megaspeed said it takes its compliance with US export control laws “extremely seriously.”

Crypto Finance Group and Sparkasse Bank Malta plc have partnered to unlock digital asset trading services for institutional clients.

The platform initially supports a few crypto assets, including Bitcoin (bitcoin:native), Ethereum (ethereum:native), ripple:native, Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Litecoin (LTC), Stellar (XLM), and Avalanche (AVAX).

The new offering brings together the familiarity of a banking relationship and institutional-grade digital asset trading infrastructure within a regulated environment.

The MiCAR approvals of Sparkasse Bank Malta and Crypto Finance reinforce the new service with the EU’s strict regulatory requirements for CASPs, setting high standards for governance, capital reserves, client asset segregation, operational stability, and other customer protections.

Joey Garcia, Executive Director and Chief Strategy, Policy and Regulatory Affairs Officer at Xapo Bank (@xapobankapp), says the $6.3 billion Binance hack is more than a technical issue; it highlights a structural flaw in crypto exchanges and many other companies.

Garcia explains that the framework creates a concentration of risk that could turn a single outage, enforcement action, or intrusion into a market-wide problem.

“Concentration isn’t automatically wrong,” Garcia clarified. “Unexamined concentration is.”

The Lehman bankruptcy in the 2008 crisis and the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapse in 2023 are perfect examples that underscore the need for diversification.

Visa is continuing its push into blockchain-powered finance by integrating Monad (monad:native) into its stablecoin settlement ecosystem.

This addition expands Visa's multi-chain infrastructure to 10 supported networks, joining existing partners such as Ethereum (ethereum:native), Solana (solana:So11111111111111111111111111111111111111112), Base, and Avalanche (avalanche-2:native), and giving institutional issuers and acquirers greater operational flexibility.

Monad brings high-performance Layer 1 capabilities, delivering up to 10,000 transactions per second to enable near-instant settlements.

Supported by over $956 million in TVL, the EVM-compatible chain provides the deep liquidity and low, predictable fees needed for high-volume corporate capital rebalancing without slippage.

The integration also lays the groundwork for future institutional privacy features, aligning with Monad's upcoming sovereign execution framework designed for confidential smart contracts.

Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz said he liquidated most of his crypto portfolio, reducing his ripple:native holdings from 26 million to 3 million tokens.

While the sell-off drew criticism from retail investors, Schwartz clarified that the move stemmed from a strict, risk-averse financial strategy and a personal commitment to take profits at market highs.

The strategy extended across all his holdings, cutting his position from 1,500 bitcoin:native down to 1 BTC and from 40,000 ethereum:native down to just 6 ETH.

Despite the widespread liquidations, market analysts noted a surprising silver lining in the math.

Schwartz retained 11.5% of his original XRP allocation, compared with just 0.067% of his Bitcoin and 0.015% of his Ethereum, leaving his relative exposure to XRP far higher than to the market leaders.