‘Freedom is the right to peacefully protest’: PM accepts pro-Palestine march will go ahead on Armistice Day
Rishi Sunak has described a planned pro-Palestinian march in London on Armistice Day as “disrespectful” – but has accepted the protest will go ahead.
The prime minister met with the chief of the Metropolitan Police Sir Mark Rowley for a crisis meeting this afternoon – and had vowed to hold him “accountable” for the commissioner’s decision to greenlight the demonstration on 11 November.
Sir Mark had resisted calls to try and block a march taking place – and said, after looking at intelligence, the legal threshold for a ban had not been met.
Israel-Gaza latest: ‘Hamas head of weapons killed’
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PM: Met Police chief ‘accountable’ over protest
In a statement, the prime minister said: “Freedom is the right to peacefully protest. And the test of that freedom is whether our commitment to it can survive the discomfort and frustration of those who seek to use it, even if we disagree with them. We will meet that test and remain true to our principles.”
He added: “It’s welcome that the police have confirmed that the march will be away from the Cenotaph and they will ensure that the timings do not conflict with any remembrance events.
“There remains the risk of those who seek to divide society using this weekend as a platform to do so. That is what I discussed with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner in our meeting.
“The commissioner has committed to keep the Met Police’s posture under constant review based on the latest intelligence about the nature of the protests.”
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Explained: Can you ban a protest?
PM ‘picking a fight with police’
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer had accused Mr Sunak of “cowardice” for “picking a fight” with the police.
He tweeted: “Remembrance events must be respected. Full stop.
“But the person the PM needs to hold accountable is his home secretary. Picking a fight with the police instead of working with them is cowardice.”
Home Secretary Suella Braverman had called the pro-Palestinian demonstrations “hate marches” and said anyone who vandalised the Cenotaph on Armistice Day “must be put into a jail cell faster than their feet can touch the ground”.
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PM ‘politicking’ over pro-Palestine march
No 10 denies putting pressure on Met
Downing Street denied seeking to put pressure on the Met, which is operationally independent, and insisted the meeting was about “seeking assurances” that their approach is “robust”.
The Met has said its officers were already preparing for remembrance events over the weekend and “we will do everything in our power to ensure that people who want to mark the occasion can do so safely and without disruption.”
In a statement on Tuesday, Sir Mark said: “The laws created by Parliament are clear. There is no absolute power to ban protest, therefore there will be a protest this weekend.”
He added that the use of the power to block moving protests is “incredibly rare” and must be reserved for cases where there is intelligence to suggest a “real threat” of serious disorder.
He said organisers of Saturday’s rally have shown “complete willingness to stay away from the Cenotaph and Whitehall and have no intention of disrupting the nation’s remembrance events”.
“Should this change, we’ve been clear we will use powers and conditions available to us to protect locations and events of national importance at all costs.”
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Organisers say protest will be ‘well away’ from Cenotaph
Tens of thousands have demonstrated in London in recent weeks over Palestinian deaths in the Israel-Hamas war, with 29 arrested during a fourth week of protests last Saturday, during which fireworks were thrown.
Organisers of the protest next Saturday say it will be “well away” from the Cenotaph – going from Hyde Park, around a mile from the war memorial in Whitehall, to the US embassy – and won’t start until after the 11am silence.
The Met chief will likely come under further pressure to change his mind in the coming days, with Cabinet ministers stressing discussions are ongoing.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay told Sky News that 11 November was the “wrong day” for protest action in London and “there’ll be ongoing discussions on this”.
He said: “There is a legal threshold and the Commissioner is of the view that that legal threshold has not been met.
“Obviously, the Home Office and colleagues will discuss that over the course of the day.”
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?
Crypto exchange KuCoin said that it may reenter South Korea after its platform was blocked in the country.
On March 21, South Korean regulators ordered Google Play to block access to exchanges that were not compliant with the requirements needed to operate in the country. On April 11, South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) ordered the Apple Store to block unregistered crypto exchanges.
KuCoin was among those affected by the country’s crackdown on unregistered platforms that were previously available. While the platform is now unavailable to South Koreans, it has not fully abandoned the jurisdiction.
In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, KuCoin’s newly appointed CEO, BC Wong, said that the crypto exchange has plans to reenter the country.
Regulators drive global players away from local markets
Wong told Cointelegraph that before the exchange can reenter South Korea, it plans to secure compliance with major jurisdictions first. He said:
“The resource is there. We need to go one by one. Our strategy will always be that major jurisdictions come first, which means the United States, EU, China, India, and maybe after that, Australia.”
Wong confirmed to Cointelegraph that KuCoin representatives had started speaking with regulators. The executive said that operating in crypto is very similar to traditional financial markets, where there’s a need for a clear background in each jurisdiction.
The KuCoin CEO also said that regulators are stricter compared to three years ago. He said that this could be a move to drive global players away from local crypto markets.
“I’m not so sure that if the regulators’ intention is to regulate the global market or just simply, they want to pave the way to get all the global kind of players to be out from their market, and pave the road for their domestic exchange,” Wong added.
Related: Kraken tells how it spotted North Korean hacker in job interview
KuCoin’s EU CEO shares regulatory challenges in Europe
Oliver Stauber, who joined KuCoin as its European Union CEO, told Cointelegraph that there are also difficulties operating in the EU, even with the bloc’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) in place.
Stauber, who previously worked as the chief legal officer of Bitpanda, told Cointelegraph that while MiCA licenses have a passporting feature, which should allow license holders to provide services across the EU, the executive said that some jurisdictions interpret the laws differently.
Stauber said that some jurisdictions may say that licenses were “wrongly assessed,” which gets in the way of operating in some jurisdictions.
“MiCA was said to have a level playing field in crypto all over Europe. However, as long as there are players who are not playing by the books, you know it’s getting quite messy and difficult,” Stauber told Cointelegraph.
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