In a strategic crypto acquisition spree, BTCS, a Nasdaq-listed blockchain infrastructure company, expands its Ethereum holdings, instead of its namesake crypto, Bitcoin (BTC). With the latest purchase of 3,450 ETH, valued at approximately $8.42 million, the platform currently holds around 12,500 tokens ($31.8 million), up from 9,063 ETH at the end of Q1 2025. Notably, BTCS sees Ethereum as a foundational asset for the company’s operations as well as its growth. According to CEO Charles Allen, the strategic addition of over $8 million in ETH to the company’s treasury aims to strengthen validator operations, increase staking revenue, and drive long-term shareholder value. BTCS Purchases 3.4K ETH: What’s Behind the Move? In an official press release, BTCS CEO Charles Allen revealed the company’s latest acquisition of a massive amount of ETH at an average price of $2,441 per token. Highlighting the significance of ETH in the platform’s growth, the CEO stated,… Read More at Coingape.com
A degen crypto trader has pulled in the trade of a lifetime after racking up a 9,000x gain on a single memecoin. The surge in Solana-based memecoin HOUSE to reach an all-time high may have earned him an early retirement, but whispers of insider trading continue to linger.
Crypto Trader Racks 9,000X Gains With HOUSE
According to an X post by Lookonchain, a crypto trader has gained a staggering $2.2 million in profit from an initial investment of $239. Per the data, the unknown trader purchased 25.77 million HOUSE for $239 in four separate transactions a month ago, but a memecoin rally has seen the value of his holdings surge.
A month after his purchase, the Solana-based memecoin reached an all-time high of 0.1055%, sending the trader’s holdings to new highs. The mega rally saw his initial $239 clinch a valuation of $2.2 million, translating to a 9,228x return in a month.
Onchain data indicates that the crypto trader sold 1.91 million HOUSE for $58.8K as the earliest profit-taking play. Despite the spike in valuation, the crypto trader is still sitting on $2.15 million worth of HOUSE in a strong show of faith.
“A month ago, he bought 25.77M $HOUSE for only $239, sold 1.91M $HOUSE for $58.8K, and still holds 23.85M $HOUSE (2.15M),” said Lookonchain.
HOUSE has gained over 60% in the last 24 hours, with trading volumes surging to $53.09 million, a near 60% increase. The Solana-based memecoin’s rise comes amid Bitcoin and altcoins flashing bullish signals at the start of the week.
Speculation Of Insider Trading Continues To Linger?
Since purchasing HOUSE, on-chain data reveals that the trader’s activity levels have dropped to the lowest levels. Prior to the $239 purchase, the crypto trader purchased and sold around 10 memecoins per day, but trading activity came to a halt after the HOUSE accumulation.
Lookonchain describes the behavior as signals of a “retirement,” but a cross-section of the crypto community is pointing to insider activity. The long-term holding behaviour is sparking speculation that the crypto trader may be a project member or developer with knowledge of an incoming price pump
“He used to trade ~10 coins daily but has hardly traded after buying $HOUSE,” noted Lookonchain. “Early retirement?”
Previously, a group of crypto traders netted $666K from a single trade, stoking similar insider trading speculations. The trader raked in the profit with a meagre investment of $4.5K in the Base Is For Everyone token.
Confidentiality has always been a contentious point in blockchain technology. As public ledgers provide transparency, they often compromise privacy. The drive to reconcile transparency and privacy is at the heart of progress in crypto, and nobody epitomizes this better than Rand Hindi, CEO of Zama.
Hindi and Zama are pioneering the integration of fully homomorphic encryption into public blockchains. BeInCrypto interviewed Rand Hindi at Cannes to discuss Zama’s journey, the mounting investor interest, and the potentially transformative implications of this technology.
Hindi, who leads one of the most acclaimed teams in cryptography, has shepherded Zama to a billion-dollar valuation by focusing on a breakthrough technology that might address some of the sector’s core adoption barriers. The conversation explores how Zama’s protocol operates, the future of confidential payments, and what it means for traditional finance and on-chain scalability.
Hindi shares essential insights on technology’s progression, Zama’s testnet, and the security benefits that go beyond today’s industry standards.
Building Zama: Addressing Privacy Through Homomorphic Encryption
We like to joke that we’re probably the company that raised the most money without anybody understanding what we’re building. The reason for this is because cryptography as a field is very obscure and opaque, but the use cases it enables are very obvious once it actually works.
Zama as a company specializes in something called fully homomorphic encryption, FHE, which is a new encryption technique that allows you to have confidentiality on top of public blockchains. For example, imagine you want to send money confidentially to someone on a blockchain. Today, you wouldn’t. The amount of money you own, the amount you’re sending is public. With our technology, you would actually have that encrypted on chain but still be able to use it as part of any kind of blockchain application.
That is really a radical new proposition, I would say, because up until now, the only way to use a blockchain was to disclose everything to everyone. We’re effectively bridging that gap.
Inside the Zama Protocol and Testnet
When we started a company a few years ago, we focused on licensing our technology to other people. Most people don’t know that nine out of ten blockchain projects that use FHE use Zama technology in the backend.
Now, we are moving to having our own protocol called the Zama protocol that allows you to have confidentiality on top of any blockchain, even those that don’t license our technology directly. So you can have confidentiality on Ethereum, on Base, on Solana, on any really public blockchain.
The ability to have that on a public blockchain means that anybody can now start building apps where the on-chain data stays confidential regardless of which chain they actually want to use to deploy it. So the Zama protocol, like every protocol, has a testnet phase where we effectively launch that and allow developers and users to try it, start building the first apps and use cases ahead of a mainnet launch where it actually goes into production.
Use Cases: Confidential Payments and Beyond
I would say, by far, the biggest use case is confidential payments. If you look at stable coins, you look at global remittances, if you look at payroll, it’s very obvious that if you want to use a blockchain for that, you need to keep data confidential. I mean, if I told you right now to open your phone and show me your bank account, would you? Definitely not a chance.
Okay, there you go. This is what happens in a blockchain because I could see everything you own and do. That makes no sense whatsoever. Once you can encrypt it with homomorphic encryption, then you can start using a blockchain like you use a traditional bank account, like use a traditional credit card for anything from buying your coffee to getting your salary to buying a house. You can do it without other people knowing about it.
That’s one use case. The second one is enabling trading and tokenization of financial assets confidentially. Let’s imagine you are a large financial institution. You’re a hedge fund, you’re a bank. You want to use a blockchain for trading or even for just like, you know, settling some trades with a partner.
If everybody can see your trades and your positions, you’re not going to have much of an advantage in the market. The whole point is to have what we call an alpha, like something, a secret sauce that you don’t reveal. Blockchain today don’t allow you to keep things private. We’re also solving that.
Scaling, Developer Experience, and Security
When we started working on this, there were three main issues. First, it didn’t work. So we had to make the technology work. That’s done. Today, we have the most secure confidentiality technology. It’s even secure against quantum computers. So it’s as secure as it can ever be.
The second problem was it was very difficult to use for a developer. We actually solve that by integrating our technology into existing programming languages for smart contracts, like Solidity, for example, on Ethereum. As a developer, you don’t need to know cryptography to build a confidential application on chain.
And finally, there’s performance. FHE traditionally was very slow. We fixed that through new mathematics, better engineering, but also with better hardware. Effectively, today, scaling FHE and, therefore, scaling global payments on-chain, all these are use cases, is just a matter of putting more compute behind it. If there is one thing we learn from AI, it is that we can throw more compute than it works. We know how to do that. Just put more servers, put more GPUs, it’ll go faster.
So, there’s really nothing preventing homomorphic encryption from becoming the technology that makes it possible to have on-chain finance in a confidential manner.
You can think of it a little bit like, in your browser, when you connect to a website, you have this small lock that tells you that this is encrypted and protected. We’re effectively doing the same thing for blockchain.
Traditional Finance Appetite and Industry Examples
I would say that probably over half of the companies we talk to are financial institutions that are not Web3 native. They all want the same thing. They want to use blockchain because blockchain is the right solution for finance. We all agree on that. That’s established by everybody from Circle to all of these other companies doing that. Confidentiality was the last blocking point for the mass adoption of blockchain for finance.
I’ll give you two examples. We are working with a company right now that is issuing a confidential stablecoin. What it means is, it’s a regular stablecoin, you can use it for payment on chain, but the issuance is confidential, the amounts that you own is confidential, the amount you transfer is confidential, so you can actually use it for payment without having to disclose anything to other people.
That’s one example. Another example is that there is a company building an on-chain self-custodial bank where your money on chain is kept confidential with our technology. We’re talking about something like Revolut, fully on-chain, self-custodial, so even if the bank goes down, you can get back your money because it’s on-chain.
Try to imagine like the first bank that cannot rug you.
Performance, Security, and Cost
Speed-wise, there is going to be almost no difference. It’s not going to slow down the underlying blockchain. The latency is a couple of seconds, a few seconds. You’re probably not going to see it. Just clicking around on an app is going to take longer than that, effectively. So speed is not an issue. Cost is not an issue. At scale, it can be as cheap as about a cent per confidential token transfer.
On like an L2, like base, even in Ethereum, we’re just adding a couple of cents on top of Ethereum gas fees. We’re almost as cheap as the underlying blockchain allows us to be, pretty much. So that’s not an issue. The third one in terms of security we are post-quantum. Even a quantum computer cannot break homomorphic encryption, FHE. That is very important because there are many technologies that are being used today as shortcuts because they’re supposedly more performant.
First of all, that’s not true. But second of all, those technologies have been broken and will be broken going forward. If you want to have the best amount of security, you have to use FHE. There is nothing else that can actually get even closer.
The Road Ahead: Future Developments and Adoption Trajectory
So we’re in testnet now, that’s already big. We’re planning to have our first main net at the end of, let’s say October.
From that point, we’re gonna have other blockchains being supported, and then it’s game on. You know, initially let’s get at least 1% of watching transactions confidential, then 10% and 20%. If we take again the example of HTTPS, in your browser, the small lock protects your data. We’re connecting to the website. It went from 5% of the internet traffic being encrypted in 2010 to 96% now, I believe. We believe FHE will follow a similar type of trajectory where, five, six, or 10 years from now, over 90% of blockchain transactions will be encrypted and confidential with homomorphic encryption.
Conclusion
Rand Hindi’s vision for Zama represents a major leap for both user privacy and institutional confidence in blockchain networks. Fully homomorphic encryption is set to enable confidential apps, payments, trading, and on-chain banking, all without sacrificing security or speed.
As Zama moves from testnet to mainnet, the aim is to make confidential blockchain transactions as common as secure web browsing. Hindi’s conviction is clear—within the next decade, encrypted, private transactions could become the standard, not the exception, across every major blockchain.
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, has introduced a compulsory KYC (Know Your Customer) re-verification process for its users in India.
This step applies to both existing and new users as the exchange looks to align with local anti-money laundering (AML) regulations.
Binance Enforces Stricter KYC in India Following Past AML Violations
Announced on April 18, the exchange said this re-verification step is part of its broader efforts to improve user security and comply with global regulatory standards.
As part of this process, users must submit updated identity documents, including their Permanent Account Number (PAN). The PAN is a 10-character alphanumeric code issued by the Income Tax Department and is required for financial transactions in India.
“Users in India may need to re-verify their KYC details, including linking their PAN. This is as per the Indian anti-money laundering (AML) laws and these requirements equally apply to all exchanges in India,” Binance stated on X.
Binance emphasized that this requirement stems from national AML laws and is not unique to its platform.
Binance also added that its users’ details were safe and secure. The exchange stated it would only request information required under Indian AML laws to prevent financial crime and support a safe, responsible digital asset ecosystem.
“This requirement is not unique to Binance and equally applies to all local and global exchanges registered under India’s AML legislation,” the firm added.
Under Indian law, traders must either submit proof of TDS payment or provide documentation for any applicable exemptions.
Meanwhile, Binance’s latest compliance efforts also follow regulatory troubles from the previous year. In 2024, India’s FIU fined the exchange ₹188.2 million (approximately $2.2 million) for failing to meet AML standards. The government also ordered the removal of Binance’s app from Apple’s App Store in the country.
So, the introduction of this re-verification process signals the company’s intention to fully comply with Indian financial regulations and restore trust among users and regulators alike.