A US federal judge has vacated key fraud and manipulation convictions against Avraham Eisenberg, the trader at the center of the case involving a $110 million exploit of the decentralized exchange Mango Markets.

On Friday, US District Judge Arun Subramanian ruled that the evidence presented at trial failed to support the jury’s conclusion that Eisenberg made materially false representations to Mango Markets.

The decision vacates Eisenberg’s convictions for commodities fraud and market manipulation and acquits him of a third charge, significantly weakening the government’s case.

Eisenberg, a self-proclaimed “applied game theorist,” was convicted in 2024 for artificially inflating the price of Mango’s MNGO token by over 1,300% in a matter of minutes and using the resulting gains as collateral to withdraw $110 million in crypto assets from the platform.

Related: US DOJ seizes $24M in crypto from accused Qakbot malware developer

Judge sides with Eisenberg

The Justice Department argued that he deceived Mango’s smart contract-based lending system, but Eisenberg’s defense maintained that he merely exploited poorly designed, permissionless code — without making any false representations.

Judge Subramanian agreed, writing that “Mango Markets was permissionless and automatic,” meaning the system couldn’t be deceived in a legal sense. “There was insufficient evidence of falsity,” the judge added, siding with Eisenberg’s interpretation of DeFi mechanics.

The judge also rejected prosecutors’ argument that the case should be heard in New York. Eisenberg was in Puerto Rico at the time of the trades, and the court found that no meaningful activity tied to the alleged crime occurred in New York.

The DOJ had cited a Poughkeepsie-based Mango user and a third-party vendor in Manhattan, but the judge ruled these were not enough to establish proper venue.

The US government must now decide whether to refile the vacated charges, though the Trump administration has recently signaled a reduced focus on crypto enforcement. Eisenberg still faces civil suits from both the SEC and CFTC.

While this ruling clears Eisenberg in the Mango Markets case, he remains behind bars.

Related: Mango Markets exploiter sentenced to over 4 years on child abuse material charges

Eisenberg charged with child pornography

In a separate case, Eisenberg was sentenced to nearly four years in prison on May 1 after pleading guilty to possessing child pornography — a charge stemming from unrelated evidence uncovered during his arrest.

In December 2022, US federal law enforcement authorities arrested Eisenberg in Puerto Rico. FBI officials charged the hacker with one count of commodities fraud and one count of commodities manipulation.

A jury found Eisenberg guilty of wire fraud, commodities fraud, and commodities manipulation in April 2024. The defense argued that the exploit was not a cybercrime and represented a “successful and legal trading strategy.”

Magazine: Crypto scam hub expose stunt goes viral, Kakao detects 70K scam apps: Asia Express

Members of the US House of Representatives called for the Justice Department to investigate Donald Trump’s May 22 dinner for his top memecoin investors, citing concerns about “foreign influence over US policy decisions” and “potential corruption and emoluments clause violations.”

In a May 22 letter to the Justice Department, 35 House members asked the public integrity section acting chief, Edward Sullivan, to launch an inquiry over the memecoin dinner to determine whether it violated the federal bribery statute or the foreign emoluments clause of the US Constitution. 

Under the emoluments clause, a US president is barred from accepting any gift from a foreign state without the approval of Congress. Bloomberg reported that a majority of the attendees at the memecoin dinner were likely foreign nationals based on their connections to crypto exchanges. 

“US law prohibits foreign persons from contributing to US political campaigns,” said the letter. “However, the $TRUMP memecoin, including the promotion of a dinner promising exclusive access to the President, opens the door for foreign governments to buy influence with the President, all without disclosing their identities.”

The call for an investigation and a press conference asking Trump to “release the guest list” for the dinner both occurred hours before the event, which was held at the Trump National Golf Club outside Washington, DC. A group of protesters, joined by Senator Jeff Merkley, gathered outside the venue with signs stating “illegal crypto party” and “democracy is not for sale.”

Related: Who attended Trump’s controversial memecoin dinner?

Though some of the dinner attendees covered their faces with masks to conceal their identities, protesters and members of the media confirmed that Tron founder Justin Sun appeared at the event, as well as other Trump supporters who posted to social media. The complete list of attendees was not available at the time of publication. 

The memecoin dinner still has the potential to affect pending legislation in Congress

In addition to the call for a DOJ investigation, Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate proposed legislation to address what they called “Trump’s crypto corruption” as Congress considered a bill to regulate stablecoins and a market structure bill. 

Several Senate Democrats who initially voted against advancing the stablecoin bill, called the GENIUS Act, later sided with Republicans to set up a debate in the chamber.

Representative Maxine Waters introduced a bill to limit the access of any US president, vice president, members of Congress and their families to cryptocurrencies. Members of the Senate will also propose an amendment to the GENIUS Act to address Trump’s connection to World Liberty Financial, a crypto platform backed by the president’s family that issued its USD1 stablecoin.

Magazine: AI cures blindness, ‘good’ propaganda bots, OpenAI doomsday bunker: AI Eye

Risk appetite across traditional and cryptocurrency markets saw a sharp rise this week, helping United States cryptocurrency funds recover the capital lost to the correction of February and March, amassing over $7.5 billion worth of weekly inflows.

Bitcoin (BTC) surpassed its old all-time high on May 21, two days after President Donald Trump confirmed ongoing ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in a May 19 X post.

Meanwhile, popular analyst and Global Macro Investor CEO Raoul Pal warned of more fiat currency debasement, urging investors to gain more exposure to cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), as these assets “will never be this cheap again.”

Exponential currency debasement: “You don’t own enough crypto, NFTs”

Cryptocurrencies and NFTs can help investors protect their eroding purchasing power during an era of exponential currency debasement, according to analysts and industry leaders.

Investing in digital assets is becoming increasingly important in the “world of the exponential age and currency debasement,” according to Raoul Pal, founder and CEO of Global Macro Investor.

“You don’t own enough crypto. When you do, you don’t own enough NFT’s, as art is upstream of wealth. Both will never be this cheap again,” Pal said.

NFTs are “the single best long term store of wealth I know and you get to buy it before network effects kick in,” he added in another response.

“There is some validity to the statement that NFTs, and in extension art, become a vehicle for the wealthy once a certain level of wealth is reached,” wrote Nicolai Sondergaard, research analyst at Nansen, calling it a “natural move” for asset diversification.

“For traders and investors, further down the wealth curve, NFTs are partially about speculating on future returns,” he told Cointelegraph, adding that NFTs also benefit from the allure of strong communities, beyond just wealth creation.

Continue reading

US crypto funds top $7.5 billion inflows in 2025 as investor appetite grows

Crypto investment products in the United States have attracted over $7.5 billion worth of investment in 2025, with a fifth week of net positive inflows last week signaling growing investor demand for digital assets.

US-based crypto investment products attracted $785 million worth of investment last week, pushing the year-to-date (YTD) total to over $7.5 billion, according to a May 19 report by digital asset manager CoinShares.

The latest figure marks the fifth consecutive week of net positive flows, following nearly $7 billion in outflows during February and March.

The United States accounted for the bulk of inflows, with $681 million, followed by Germany at $86.3 million and Hong Kong at $24.4 million.

Investor demand for risk assets such as cryptocurrencies staged a significant recovery after the White House announced a 90-day pause on additional tariffs on May 12, which marked a 24% cut for import tariffs for both the US and China.

A day after the announcement, Coinbase exchange saw 9,739 Bitcoin worth more than $1 billion withdrawn from the exchange — the highest net outflow recorded in 2025, signaling that institutional appetite was “accelerating,” according to Bitwise’s head of European research, André Dragosch.

Continue reading

VanEck to launch Avalanche ecosystem fund

VanEck plans to launch a private digital assets fund in June targeting tokenized Web3 projects built on the Avalanche blockchain network, the asset manager said in a statement shared with Cointelegraph.

The VanEck PurposeBuilt Fund, available only to accredited investors, aims to invest in liquid tokens and venture-backed projects across Web3 sectors, including gaming, financial services, payments, and artificial intelligence. 

Idle capital will be deployed into Avalanche (AVAX) real-world asset (RWA) products, including tokenized money market funds, VanEck said.

The fund will be managed by the team behind VanEck’s Digital Assets Alpha Fund (DAAF), which oversees more than $100 million in net assets as of May 21. 

“The next wave of value in crypto will come from real businesses, not more infrastructure,” Pranav Kanade, portfolio manager for DAAF, said in a statement.

Continue reading

Yield-bearing stablecoins surge to $11 billion, now 4.5% of market: Report

Yield-bearing stablecoins have soared to $11 billion in circulation, representing 4.5% of the total stablecoin market, a steep climb from just $1.5 billion and a 1% market share at the start of 2024.

One of the biggest winners is Pendle, a decentralized protocol that enables users to lock in fixed yields or speculate on variable interest rates. Pendle now accounts for 30% of all yield-bearing stablecoin total value locked (TVL), roughly $3 billion, according to a report from Pendle compiled by analysts from Spartan Group and Modular Capital shared with Cointelegraph.

The report noted that stablecoins make up 83% of its $4 billion total value locked, a sharp rise from less than 20% just a year ago. In contrast, assets such as Ether (ETH), which historically contributed 80%–90% of Pendle’s TVL, have shrunk to less than 10%.

Traditional stablecoins like USDt (USDT) and USDC (USDC) do not pass on interest to holders. With over $200 billion in circulation and US Federal Reserve interest rates at 4.3%, Pendle estimates that stablecoin holders are missing out on more than $9 billion in annual yield.

Continue reading

Tether surpasses Germany’s $111 billion of US Treasury holdings

Tether, the $151 billion stablecoin issuance giant, has surpassed Germany in United States Treasury bill holdings, showcasing the benefits of a diversified reserve strategy that has helped the firm navigate the volatility of the cryptocurrency market.

Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin, USDT, has surpassed Germany’s $111.4 billion worth of US Treasurys, data from the US Department of the Treasury shows.

Tether has surpassed $120 billion worth of Treasury bills, the firm shared in its attestation report for the first quarter of 2025. That makes Tether the 19th largest entity among all counties in terms of T-bill investments.

“This milestone not only reinforces the company’s conservative reserve management strategy but also highlights Tether’s growing role in distributing dollar-denominated liquidity at scale,” wrote Tether in the report. 

During 2024, Tether was the seventh-largest buyer of US Treasurys across all countries, surpassing Canada, Taiwan, Mexico, Norway, Hong Kong and numerous other countries, Cointelegraph reported in March 2025.

Continue reading:

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.

Worldcoin (WLD) rose over 32% as the week’s biggest gainer in the top 100, followed by the Hyperliquid (HYPE) token, up over 30% on the weekly chart.

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.