Emergency workers won’t need to be jabbed to have self-isolation exemption as testing expanded
Boris Johnson is facing growing pressure to allow fully vaccinated people who have been identified as close contacts of coronavirus cases to be exempt from isolation.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has joined business leaders in calling for more workers to be allowed to skip quarantine if they are alerted by the NHS COVID-19 app to prevent a staffing crisis during the so-called “pingdemic”.
In a letter to the prime minister, the mayor and industry bodies including UKHospitality, the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry and London’s branch of the Federation of Small Businesses, said there is “an urgent need to outline a more considered approach” on the rules regarding self-isolation.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has urged the PM to outline ‘a more considered approach’ to self-isolation
They warned that the app is exacerbating staff shortages for pubs, bars and restaurants.
The government has announced that a phased approach to testing will soon see some “critical workers” being exempt from quarantine as long as they use daily lateral flow tests and the results are negative.
But the mayor and business leaders said daily PCR tests should be used instead.
“The summer months are crucial for many businesses’ recovery and their ability to recover must not be put in jeopardy,” they noted.
“We are therefore calling on you to ensure that the necessary testing is in place to enable people who have been double vaccinated for longer than two weeks and pinged by the NHS COVID app, to immediately return to work, following a negative PCR test, rather than having to self-isolate.”
The PM is also facing calls from senior members of his own backbenches for a change to the system.
Conservative MP and chairman of the health and social care select committee Jeremy Hunt warned the government that it faces “losing social consent” for the self-isolation scheme if nothing is done.
Boris Johnson is isolating in Chequers after being alerted as a close contact of Sajid Javid who tested positive for the virus
And fellow Conservative Greg Clark, a former business secretary who now chairs the Commons science and technology committee, suggested that an exemption from self-isolation for all those fully-vaccinated should be brought in immediately.
It comes as pub and restaurant bosses warned of a “summer of venue closures” unless hospitality workers are exempt from quarantine rules as cases continue to increase.
More than 600,000 people were alerted by the app in the week to 14 July.
And the latest information from the Office for National Statistics showed around one in 75 people in England currently have the virus.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng admitted the government is “very concerned” about the numbers of people being pinged by the NHS app.
From 16 August, all of those double vaccinated will be exempt from self-isolation if identified as a close contact, the government has said.
Jeremy Hunt says the government faces ‘losing social consent’ over the isolation system if it fails to act
Environment Secretary George Eustice told Sky News this date “at the moment is not coming forward”.
The PM himself is currently isolating at Chequers, having been identified as a close contact of newly-appointed Health Secretary Sajid Javid who tested positive for coronavirus.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak was identified as another of Mr Javid’s contacts – and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was also forced into isolation on Wednesday after one of his children tested positive for the virus.
On Thursday evening, the government published a list of 16 sectors where double-jabbed workers will be eligible to avoid isolation if they undergo daily lateral flow testing and their results are negative.
These included energy, civil nuclear, digital infrastructure, food production and supply, waste, water, veterinary medicines, essential chemicals, essential transport, medicines, medical devices, clinical consumable supplies, emergency services, border control, essential defence outputs, and local government.
Around 10,000 workers in the food sector are also expected to be included in the scheme.
And on Friday, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs expanded on this further, outlining the positions the exemptions would apply to “subject to all other mitigation options being exhausted”.
Around 10,000 food sector workers are among those who could be exempt from isolation
The roles include manufacturing maintenance engineers, specialist reach truck drivers, official vets, environmental health officers, landfill operators, water engineers, laboratory staff essential to the batch release of medicines, and environment agency staff operating critical flood defence assets.
Those who work in the roles above will be able to leave their COVID-19 isolation to travel to work and do their jobs after a negative daily test but must remain at home otherwise and go straight into quarantine if they receive a positive result.
It will only apply to workers who are fully vaccinated – and 14 days after their second coronavirus jab.
Senator Cynthia Lummis and at least one other Republican in Congress are reportedly critical of US President Donald Trump for offering the top holders of his memecoin a dinner and White House tour.
According to a May 2 CNBC report, Lummis said the idea that the US president was offering exclusive access to himself and the White House for people willing to pay for it “gives [her] pause.” She wasn’t the only member of the Republican Party to be critical of Trump’s memecoin perks, announced on April 23, roughly three months after the then-president-elect launched the TRUMP token.
“I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to charge people to come into the Capitol and take a tour,” said Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, according to NBC News.
Despite Lummis’ reported “pause” over the president’s actions, on May 2, she posted a video to X of herself speaking on the Senate floor, saying she was “particularly pleased” by Trump’s support of legislation to establish a strategic Bitcoin (BTC) reserve in the United States. The Boosting Innovation, Technology, and Competitiveness through Optimized Investment Nationwide, or BITCOIN, Act would seemingly codify Trump’s executive order to create a national crypto reserve.
Related: House Democrats want ethics probe on Trump over crypto projects
The launch of the TRUMP coin on Jan. 17 was met with outrage from many lawmakers and figures in the crypto industry, who pointed to potential conflicts of interest and implications of allowing foreign actors to channel funds directly to Trump. The criticism continued after Trump announced that a group of the top memecoin holders would have the opportunity to apply for a White House tour and dinner.
“Trump once claimed he is so rich he cannot be bought,” said Craig Holman, a government ethics expert with the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. “But his obsession with money means he apparently can be bought for a meme.”
Calls for impeachment over ties to crypto
Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, called for Trump’s impeachment during an April 25 town hall, claiming the memecoin dinner represented “selling access for what are effectively payments directly to him.” During his first term, Trump was impeached twice in the House of Representatives but acquitted after the Senate votes fell short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction.
At the time of publication, it was unclear who, if any, of the memecoin holders would attend the May 22 dinner with Trump. Usernames from the TRUMP leaderboard have led to speculation that staunch supporters like Tron founder Justin Sun and Tesla CEO Elon Musk could be among the attendees. As of May 2, neither the individuals nor the companies have made any formal announcements.
Magazine: Trump’s crypto ventures raise conflict of interest, insider trading questions
The cryptocurrency market continued its recovery in the past week as the total crypto market capitalization breached the $3 trillion mark for the first time since the beginning of March.
Bitcoin (BTC) rose to an over two-month high of $97,300 last seen at the end of February, before the “Liberation Day” tariffs announcement in the US, bolstering analyst predictions for a rally driven by “structural” institutional and exchange-traded fund (ETF) inflows into the world’s first cryptocurrency.
Risk appetite continued rising among crypto investors, as Chinese state-linked news outlets indicated that the Trump administration has quietly contacted Beijing to discuss tariff reductions.
In the wider crypto space, Ethereum developers proposed a new token standard to improve the interoperability of the world’s second-largest blockchain network.
Bitcoin to $1 million by 2029 fueled by ETF and gov’t demand — Bitwise exec
Bitcoin’s expanding institutional adoption may provide the “structural” inflows necessary to surpass gold’s market capitalization and push its price beyond $1 million by 2029, according to Bitwise’s head of European research, André Dragosch.
“Our in-house prediction is $1 million by 2029. So that Bitcoin will match gold’s market cap and total addressable market by 2029,” he told Cointelegraph during the Chain Reaction daily X spaces show on April 30.
Gold is currently the world’s largest asset, valued at over $21.7 trillion. In comparison, Bitcoin’s market capitalization sits at $1.9 trillion, making it the seventh-largest asset globally, according to CompaniesMarketCap data.
For the 2025 market cycle, Bitcoin may surpass $200,000 in the “base case” and $500,000 with more governmental adoption, Dragosch said.
Eric Trump: USD1 will be used for $2 billion MGX investment in Binance
Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX will use a stablecoin linked to US President Donald Trump’s family to settle a $2 billion investment in Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
The World Liberty Financial USD (USD1) US dollar-pegged stablecoin was launched by the Trump-associated crypto platform World Liberty Financial (WLFI) in March 2025.
MGX will use the USD1 stablecoin for its $2 billion investment in the Binance exchange, according to an announcement by Eric Trump during a panel discussion at Token2049 in Dubai. Trump, the son of the president, serves as executive vice president of the Trump Organization.
MGX announced its investment in Binance on March 12, marking the first institutional investment in the exchange and one of the biggest funding deals in the entire Web3 industry.
At the time, Binance declined Cointelegraph’s request to disclose what stablecoin was used in the transaction.
This marks the Abu Dhabi-based investment firm’s first venture into the cryptocurrency space.
Ethereum to simplify crosschain transactions with new token standards
Ethereum developers are working to improve blockchain interoperability with two new token standards: ERC-7930 and ERC-7828.
“There’s no standard way for wallets, apps, or protocols to interpret or display this information,” decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem development organization Wonderland wrote in a May 1 X post. Wallets, decentralized applications (DApps), block explorers and smart contracts follow different rules.
“The result? A messy, inconsistent experience that breaks crosschain UX,“ Wonderland stated.
Wonderland is a group of developers, researchers and data scientists focused on improving the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem. The organization partnered with multiple DeFi protocols, including Optimism, Aztec, Connext and Yearn.
In the post, the organization shared what was discussed at a recent Ethereum Foundation interoperability working group call. Teddy from Wonderland explained that the current goal is to finalize both token standards within the next two weeks. He added:
“We badly need feedback on the ETH-Magicians forum.”
Crypto hackers hit DeFi for $92 million in April as attacks double from March
Cryptocurrency hackers stole more than $90 million in April, dealing another blow to the industry’s mainstream reputation despite ongoing efforts to improve cybersecurity.
Hackers made off with $92 million of digital assets across 15 incidents in April, according to an April 30 research report by blockchain cybersecurity firm Immunefi.
The total marks a 124% month-over-month increase from March, when hackers stole $41 million.
The month’s largest hack on open-source platform UPCX accounted for most of the damage in April, with over $70 million in losses, while KiloEx lost $7.5 million as April’s second-largest hack.
The KiloEx exploiter returned the stolen funds just days after the attack occurred.
All of April’s reported attacks targeted decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms. Centralized exchanges reported no incidents during the month, the report noted.
Immunefi, which says it helps protect $190 billion in user funds, has paid more than $116 million in bounties to white hat hackers.
Crypto group asks Trump to end prosecution of crypto devs, Roman Storm
The crypto lobby group, the DeFi Education Fund, has petitioned the Trump administration to end what it claimed was the “lawless prosecution” of open-source software developers, including Roman Storm, a creator of the crypto mixing service Tornado Cash.
In an April 28 letter to White House crypto czar David Sacks, the group urged President Donald Trump “to take immediate action to discontinue the Biden-era Department of Justice’s lawless campaign to criminalize open-source software development.”
The letter specifically mentioned the prosecution of Storm, who was charged in August 2023 with helping launder over $1 billion in crypto through Tornado Cash. His trial is still set for July, and his fellow charged co-founder, Roman Semenov, is at large and believed to be in Russia.
The DeFi Education Fund said that in Storm’s case, the Department of Justice is attempting to hold software developers criminally liable for how others use their code, which is “not only absurd in principle, but it sets a precedent that potentially chills all crypto development in the United States.”
The group also called for the recognition that the prosecution contradicts the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) guidance from Trump’s first term, which established that developers of self-custodial, peer-to-peer protocols are not money transmitters.
“This kind of legal environment does not just chill innovation — it freezes it,” they argued. The letter added that it also “empowers politically-motivated enforcement and puts every open-source developer at risk, regardless of industry.”
In January, a federal court in Texas ruled that the Treasury overstepped its authority by sanctioning Tornado Cash.
DeFi market overview
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the green.
The Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) token rose over 103% as the week’s biggest gainer, followed by the Solayer (LAYER) token, up over 29% during the past week.
Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education regarding this dynamically advancing space.
The US Central Intelligence Agency is increasingly incorporating Bitcoin (BTC) as a tool in its operations, and working with the cryptocurrency is a matter of national security, Michael Ellis, the agency’s deputy director, told podcast host Anthony Pompliano.
In an appearance on the market analyst and investor’s show, Ellis told Pompliano that the intelligence agency works with law enforcement to track BTC, and it is a point of data collection in counter-intelligence operations. Ellis added:
“Bitcoin is here to stay — cryptocurrency is here to stay. As you know, more and more institutions are adopting it, and I think that is a great trend. One that this administration has obviously been leaning forward into.”
“It’s another area of competition where we need to ensure the United States is well-positioned against China and other adversaries,” Ellis said.
Although Ellis’s comments point to Bitcoin maturing as an asset, they also reflect the increased involvement of governments and institutions in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. This increased involvement runs contrary to the libertarian and cypherpunk ethos originally inherent in crypto.
Related: Geopolitical tensions fuel central bank shift toward gold, crypto — BlackRock exec
Bitcoin: from cypherpunk experiment to state reserve asset
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve on March 7, to mixed reactions from the Bitcoin community.
Bitcoin Magazine CEO David Bailey celebrated the move, while Venice AI founder and BTC advocate Erik Vorhees warned against the government owning any Bitcoin but added that if the US government is to adopt any crypto reserve, it should be Bitcoin-only.
Concerns that cryptocurrencies have lost their cypherpunk roots predate the current market cycle and any strategic reserve legislation or comprehensive regulatory frameworks for digital assets.
In March 2020, Therese Chambers, the former director of retail and regulatory investigations at the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), argued that cryptocurrencies had become increasingly financialized and institutionalized.
Chambers added that digital assets were behaving far more like traditional financial instruments than the privacy-preserving tools they were initially billed as.
Magazine: Big Questions: Did the NSA create Bitcoin?
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