A new political term, and a new reality for the Conservatives, as what’s left of the party regroups in Westminster and gets down to the business of picking a new leader.
On Monday, it was the turn of Kemi Badenoch and James Cleverly to officially launch their campaigns ahead of the first knock-out round on Wednesday.
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Their competing visions for the party are a window into how this race will shape up.
Those involved say the choice Conservative MPs and members make will determine whether the party has a shot of turning its devastating election loss into just one term out of office.
Look at the Labour working majority of 181 and the obvious answer seems to be that a rebuild is a two-term project at the very best.
But as both Badenoch and Cleverly supporters told me at their launch today, the Starmer support is wide but shallow, with the Labour leader garnering the support of 34% of voters (as opposed to 43% of the vote won by Tony Blair in 1997).
The two would-be leaders on Monday had very different pitches.
Badenoch is running on a ticket of “renewal” and used her speech to outline her principles – personal responsibility, citizenship, family, telling the truth – rather than going into policies.
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‘Kemi has Thatcher’s courage’
She pledged to tell “hard truths” as she declared that her former government “talked right but governed left, sounding like Conservatives but acting like Labour”.
“Government should do fewer things, but what it does, it should do with brilliance,” she said.
“We can’t just keep having the same policy arguments from the last parliament. We lost. We are not in power… we have to focus on renewal. The renewal of our party, our politics, our thinking.”
Cleverly, meanwhile, leaned into a policy platform.
He spoke about spending 3% on more on defence, bringing back the Rwanda scheme, cutting taxes, and shrinking the state, as he pitched himself as the ultra-loyalist former cabinet minister who could unite the party and use his experience in government to get the Tories ready for power once more.
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At the heart of the debate, and the success or failure of the next iteration of the Conservative party, is whether MPs and members select a leader that doesn’t just win back voters lost to Reform by tacking right on immigration – (Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugenhadt are pledging to leave the ECHR in order to tackle the small boat crisis, something Cleverly argued is not necessary, and Badenoch says is not a priority), but also wins back the millions that drifted to Labour, the Lib Dems or stayed at home.
Badenoch is the bookies’ favourite, but around Westminster, seasoned political operatives say the contest is simply too hard to call.
Badenoch commanded the support of a number of high profile MPs today at her launch, such as former cabinet minister Claire Coutinho and ex-Treasury minister Laura Trott.
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Cleverly only had four MPs at his event, which instead was filled with party members, with activists there telling me his undying loyalty to the party during difficult times had won plenty of support with the grassroots.
On Wednesday, one of the six will be eliminated from the race, with another candidate going the following week.
The remaining four will battle it out at the party conference at the end of the month before MPs whittle the four down to a final two for the party membership to choose between.
For a party badly battered in the last general election, they can at least take comfort that the man in No10 was written off when he took over from Jeremy Corbyn in 2020 as a Labour leader who would never be able to overturn Johnson’s 80-seat majority in one term.
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There are many reasons for this, from external pressures – be it the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine – to own goals and leadership failure – “Partygate”, Tory turmoil, and the chaotic premiership of Liz Truss.
But it was helped too by a leader that talked to the left during the leadership race, only to reset in the centre group and – in Starmer’s words – “put country before party” when he finally got his hands on the top job.
After learning the lessons of the election drubbing, the next Conservative leader might want to look at the Starmer playbook for clawing your party back to power too.
PayPal says the US Securities and Exchange Commission has abandoned its investigation into the payment giant’s US-dollar stablecoin.
PayPal said in an April 29 regulatory filing that the SEC concluded its investigation into PayPal USD (PYUSD) and wouldn’t be taking any action.
The company said it received a subpoena from the SEC’s Division of Enforcement over its stablecoin in November 2023.
“The subpoena requests the production of documents. We are cooperating with the SEC in connection with this request,” PayPal stated at the time.
In its latest filing, the firm said the SEC notified it in February that the agency “was closing this inquiry without enforcement action.”
PayPal has said its stablecoin is 100% redeemable for US dollars and “fully backed” by dollar deposits, including short-term treasuries and cash equivalents.
However, the stablecoin has struggled to gain momentum in a crowded market dominated by rivals Tether and Circle. PYUSD has a market capitalization of just $880 million, less than 1% of Tether’s (USDT) $148.5 billion.
PayPal’s stablecoin has seen better growth this year with a 75% increase in PYUSD circulating supply since the beginning of 2025, according to CoinGecko. It remains down 14% from its peak supply of just over $1 billion in August 2024.
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That growth could be bolstered by a company announcement on April 23 introducing rewards for PYUSD in a new loyalty offering that will enable US users to earn 3.7% annually for holding the asset on the platform.
Meanwhile, on April 24, PayPal announced a partnership with Coinbase to increase the adoption of PYUSD.
“We are excited to drive new, exciting, and innovative use cases together with Coinbase and the entire cryptocurrency community, putting PYUSD at the center,” said Alex Chriss, PayPal President and CEO.
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The payments giant also reported robust first-quarter earnings and the completion of significant share repurchase activities.
The firm beat Wall Street estimates, earning $1.33 per share in the first quarter, topping analyst expectations of $1.16. Revenue rose 1% from a year before to $7.8 billion.
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Asset manager BlackRock has filed to create digital ledger technology shares from one of the firm’s money market funds, which will leverage blockchain technology to maintain a mirror record of share ownership for investors.
The DLT shares will track BlackRock’s BLF Treasury Trust Fund (TTTXX), which may only be purchased from BlackRock Advisors and The Bank of New York Mellon (BNY), the firm said in its April 29 Form N-1A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The money market fund holds over $150 million worth of assets, invested almost entirely in US Treasury bills and cash.
BlackRock said that the shares “are expected to be purchased and held through BNY, which intends to use blockchain technology to maintain a mirror record of share ownership for its customers.”
Unlike the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), DLT shares won’t be tokenized but will instead be used as a transparency tool to verify ownership.
BlackRock will continue to maintain traditional book-entry records as the official ownership ledger.
BlackRock didn’t propose a ticker or set a management fee for the DLT shares in its filing.
A minimum initial investment of $3 million worth of DLT is required for institutions seeking to purchase the digital shares.
BlackRock follows Fidelity’s March 21 filing to list an Ethereum-based OnChain share class, which seeks to track the Fidelity Treasury Digital Fund (FYHXX) — an $80 million fund consisting almost entirely of US Treasury bills.
While the OnChain share class filing is pending regulatory approval, Fidelity expects it to take effect on May 30.
Wall Street heavyweights continue to explore blockchain use cases
Asset managers have increasingly turned to blockchain to tokenize Treasury bills, bonds and private credit over the past few years.
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The treasury tokenization market is currently valued at $6.16 billion, led by BlackRock’s BUIDL at $2.55 billion, while the Franklin Templeton-issued Franklin OnChain US Government Money Fund (BENJI) secures over $700 million worth of real-world assets, according to rwa.xyz.
Ethereum remains the chain of choice for tokenizing treasury assets, and currently houses over $4.55 billion worth, while the Stellar network and Solana round out the top three at $474.9 million and $274.5 million, respectively.
The potential of RWA tokenization has also been championed by BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink, who believes the technology could revolutionize investing.
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The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control can’t restore or reimpose sanctions against the crypto mixing service Tornado Cash, a US federal court has ruled.
Austin federal court judge Robert Pitman said in an April 28 judgment that OFAC’s sanctions on Tornado Cash were unlawful and that the agency was “permanently enjoined from enforcing” sanctions.
Tornado Cash users led by Joseph Van Loon had sued the Treasury, arguing that OFAC’s addition of the platform’s smart contract addresses to its Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list was “not in accordance with law.”
OFAC had sanctioned Tornado Cash in August 2022, accusing the protocol of helping launder crypto stolen by the North Korean hacking collective, the Lazarus Group.
The agency dropped the platform from the sanctions list on March 21 and argued that the matter was “moot” after a court ruled in favor of Tornado Cash in January.
This latest amended ruling prevents OFAC from re-sanctioning Tornado Cash or putting it back on the blacklist.
Initially, the court denied a motion for partial summary judgment and granted in favour of the Treasury. However, the Fifth Circuit reversed the decision and instructed the lower court to grant partial summary judgment to the plaintiffs, which led to the sanctions being revoked.
In March, the Treasury argued there was no need for a final court judgment in the lawsuit.
Crypto body petitions White House over Tornado Cash
On April 28, the DeFi Education Fund petitioned White House crypto czar David Sacks to have prosecutors drop charges against Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm.
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Storm was charged in August 2023 with helping launder over $1 billion in crypto through the protocol, and his trial is still set for July.
The group said that the Department of Justice was attempting to hold software developers criminally liable for how others use their code, which they argued was “not only absurd in principle, but it sets a precedent that potentially chills all crypto development in the United States.”
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