Top crypto stories of week 21, 2025
Mon 19 to Sun 25 May 2025
The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 19 to Sun 25 May 2025, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 55 comments in total. Most-shared sources: warpcast.com, x.com, youtu.be.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- @macbudkowski: "After two years, I'm leaving Kiwi" (warpcast.com)
- @timdaub: alpha release of new Kiwi News mini app (farcaster.xyz)
- Non-Custodial Crypto Debit Cards (defiprime.com)
Few crypto debit cards now meet the strict original definition of non-custodial, so the updated test asks only that funds stay in a wallet or smart contract the user controls and move out only when paying. Most programs share infrastructure, with Rain as program manager or issuing partner for many and Third National as issuer in most terms. On August 28, 2026, an attacker drained $500,859.22 from 1,685 Avici users through a Rain-run Solana card contract, and Rain covered the refunds.
- Circle in talks to sell as Coinbase and Ripple emerge as top buyers (watcher.guru)
Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, is reportedly in informal talks to be sold to either Coinbase or Ripple, according to a Fortune report, while it still moves forward with its IPO plans. Circle filed for an IPO in April, and sources told Fortune the firm is seeking at least $5 billion, the value of the proposed offering. One source said Circle "would sell in a heartbeat" if Coinbase wanted to buy it, while another said "things change week by week." Ripple had earlier made an acquisition offer that was rejected.
- PinMe: A free and permissionless IPFS pinning and ENS binding tool (pinme.eth.limo)
- @vitalik: proposal for secret UN voting to reduce global power dynamics (warpcast.com)
- @molly0xFFF: Coinbase changes user agreement before data breach disclosure (x.com)
- Circles Whitepaper (full version) (files.gitbook.com)
- Berlin Protocol Days 2025 (days.protocol.berlin)
- WSJ‘s recap of the Trump crypto dinner (youtu.be)
- @dwr.eth: Farcaster introduces optional Pro subscription model (warpcast.com)
- Measuring decentralization (truthcoin.info)
Decentralized money is measured here as the cost of the option to create a new full node, which the article calls CONOP. Under this measure, Ripple is centralized because it allows only one full node, its own, so adding a second is infinitely expensive, and its approval-based Unique Node List makes future membership uncertain. The article holds that true peer-to-peer operation requires Bitcoin to be above the law, and that a free node cost would mean perfect decentralization, while the cost of a full US dollar node is unaffordable by design.
- AI model circumvents shutdown command, raises safety concerns (x.com)
- zkTLS: Key to Crypto Mass Adoption (youtu.be)
Jordan McKinney's video explains zkTLS, presented as a key to crypto mass adoption, first at a high level and then in relation to TLS. It covers trust assumptions and a series of use cases, including uncollateralized lending, payday lending, invoice factoring, zkP2P, social media, and marketing. The video ends with a segment on the big picture.
- Competitive Hormone Supplementation Is Shaping America’s Future Business Titans (open.substack.com)
Brian P. Hoover argues that hormone-altering drugs are shaping how American business leaders behave, with testosterone supplementation helping keep executives combative well into middle age. He cites male testosterone levels declining at about 1% per year and the number of U.S. testosterone replacement therapy patients tripling from 2001 through 2013. Hoover suspects that Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Sergey Brin may be using such drugs, though he says he has no access to their medical records. He also links cocaine to 1980s hostile takeovers and Adderall to the 2000s boom in credit derivatives.
- @balajis: How USDC grew from $25M to $56B in seven years (x.com)
- The creative power of constraints (arun.is)
Constraints drive creativity rather than hinder it, and successful creators reframe imposed limits as personal challenges, according to the article. It cites Michael Bierut's view that "the problem contains the solution," his poster series for the Yale School of Architecture, and West Eight's Borneo Sporenburg district in Amsterdam, where firms designed houses under shared rules yielding nearly 20 different designs. Famicase, an annual Tokyo exhibition of imaginary video games, and YouTuber pwnisher's 3D challenges are offered as further examples of minimal constraints producing diverse work.
- Big update for Vibecondom: A security tool for detecting hidden characters and.. (warpcast.com)
- @Rabby_io: Firefox wallet extension to be discontinued (x.com)
The Rabby Wallet Firefox extension is being discontinued and will no longer be maintained. The decision is attributed to long-standing challenges with the Firefox platform, including a lack of full support for hardware wallets such as Ledger, which directly affects the user experience. The announcement also cites Firefox's relatively small user base, which makes ongoing maintenance disproportionately costly compared with other platforms, and recommends using the Rabby extension on Chrome or Brave instead.
- Introducing Circles V2: Money for a Multipolar World - Gnosis (gnosis.io)
Gnosis has launched Circles V2 on Gnosis, a trust-based monetary network in which individuals issue their own currency and value comes from relationships rather than institutions. Each person can issue 1 CRC token per hour, and CRC balances shrink by 7% each year to encourage users to spend rather than hold. Circles V2 adds Group Currencies, which let communities convert personal CRC into shared group tokens, and it is accessed through the Metri wallet, which supports swaps via CoW Swap and spending through Gnosis Pay and Visa.