Cryptocurrency
Tether Will Freeze Venezuelan Wallets Being Used to Evade US Sanctions

Tether has announced that all wallets associated with Venezuela’s attempts to bypass U.S. sanctions on oil exports will be frozen.
The decision follows recent reports indicating an increased use of Tether’s USDT by Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA, to avoid sanctions imposed by the United States.
Venezuela’s PDVSA Turns to Tether Amid Sanctions
According to a Reuters report, Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA, transitioned to using Tether’s USDT after facing renewed sanctions on its oil exports.
Tether took a similar stance in December last year, freezing 161 wallets in compliance with U.S. sanctions.
A spokesperson for the stablecoin issuer emphasized the company’s commitment to upholding sanctions by stating, “Tether respects the OFAC SDN list and is committed to working to ensure sanction addresses are frozen properly.”
PDVSA’s increased use of cryptocurrency payments is part of a broader strategy to mitigate the repercussions of U.S. sanctions re-imposed due to Venezuela’s failure to implement electoral reforms.
By using cryptocurrencies like USDT, PDVSA can conduct transactions while minimizing the risk of assets being seized by U.S. authorities. Reuters notes that PDVSA uses intermediaries to hide the trail and evade tracking in USDT transactions.
However, a recent PDVSA scandal has complicated matters, as investigations uncovered around $21 billion in unexplained receivables from oil exports. This scandal is partly linked to prior transactions involving other cryptocurrencies, adding complexity to the situation.
USDT Prepayment for Oil Deals
In 2024, PDVSA restructured its spot oil deals to require prepayment for half of each cargo’s value in USDT. This requires new customers interested in buying Venezuelan oil to possess a digital wallet capable of conducting cryptocurrency transactions.
Furthermore, the U.S. government has conditionally permitted the resumption of business with PDVSA. This decision came in October when Washington issued a six-month license, allowing trading houses and former PDVSA customers to resume business with Venezuela. However, due to digital transaction requirements, many of these entities had to rely on intermediaries to facilitate the transactions.
Venezuela’s venture into cryptocurrencies dates back to 2018, when it introduced the “petro” token to mitigate the economic turbulence induced by U.S. sanctions. However, the petro’s poor adoption led to its shelving earlier this year.
Meanwhile, OFAC has recently intensified its scrutiny of the cryptocurrency industry. In December, OFAC imposed fines on crypto exchange CoinList amounting to $1.2 million for facilitating Russian users in evading sanctions. Before this, the agency sanctioned a crypto mixer allegedly used by hackers in North Korea.
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Cryptocurrency
Bitcoin Price Taps $108,000 as Donald Trump Addresses Iran-Israel Situation

Bitcoin’s price has increased by 2.8% throughout the past 24 hours and briefly touched $108,000. The move has caused around $210 million worth of liquidated long and short positions across the derivatives markets, according to data from CoinGlass.
The cryptocurrency has since retraced and currently trades at around $107,600.
The recent price action comes amid several statements made by the US President Donald Trump, who said that he thinks the war between Iran and Israel is over and that “Iran has a huge advantage, I don’t see them getting back involved in nuclear.”
Morever, Trump also spoke of Russia and the situation in Ukraine. He said that they didn’t discuss a ceasefire with President Zelensky, while also saying that he considers Russian President Putin to be “misguided.”
Furthermore, he also outlined that he will be talking with Iranian leadership next week and that they “may sign an agreeme and would ask for no nuclear.”
The market remains very volatile, at the time of this writing.
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Cryptocurrency
From Chaos to Composability: Enso’s Connor Howe on Rethinking Web3 Infrastructure

Few startup journeys begin with a vampire attack, but for Connor Howe, CEO and co-founder of Enso, that chaos became a proving ground.
What had started as a social DeFi platform quickly evolved through hard-won lessons into something that’s currently far more ambitious – a unified intent engine for Web3, a DeFi super app, if you will.
In this interview, Howe reflects on the pivots, the pain points, and the revelations that led to Enso’s vision of radically simplifying on-chain development. He shares how intent-based design shifts developer thinking, what it means to build with abstraction in mind, and why Enso’s recent $3B milestone is just the beginning.
From vampire attacks to intent engines — Enso’s journey has evolved rapidly. Looking back, what was the pivotal moment when you realized shortcuts and intent-based development weren’t just features, but the foundation for a whole new kind of infrastructure?
We’ve been through two pivots to get to where we are and have experienced the hurdles of building in Web3 firsthand. We started with the vampire attack and a social trading product, where we integrated 15 DeFi protocols. That alone took months and over $500k in audits. Then we pivoted to a DeFi super app, which required even more protocol support. But in that process, we discovered a fast and secure way to integrate any protocol and standardized common onchain actions across smart contracts. When launching the DeFi super app, we supported 50+ protocols. Other builders noticed and started asking how we did it. So we spun up an API, and in the first week, it saw $11M in volume.
That was the moment it clicked. Shortcuts aren’t just a feature, but the foundation. We don’t have too many apps in Web3, we have too few. And it’s because building them is too hard. We lived through that pain, and built Enso to fix it. Not just for us, but for everyone.
One of the most persistent issues in Web3 is fragmentation across chains and protocols. Enso proposes a unification layer through intents, but what are the biggest architectural or governance challenges in maintaining that kind of composability across a decentralized landscape?
One of the biggest architectural challenges is that every blockchain speaks a different “language”, i.e. different speeds, block sizes, and quirks in how contracts are written, deployed and executed. Composability becomes a nightmare when you’re a developer trying to stitch together these fundamentally different systems.
Enso acts as a unification layer that approaches this from the bottom up. Rather than forcing developers to think in terms of chain-specific implementations, Enso abstracts that complexity away. To make this scalable, the Enso network encompasses the full stack for reading data and executing onchain. It’s a decentralized, open network where developers and AI agents can contribute data feeds and smart contract information, enabling fast, reliable execution across an ever-growing number of blockchains.
The idea of intent-driven development sounds intuitive, even obvious, once you hear it — but it challenges decades of imperative software thinking. What do you think needs to shift in developer mindsets (especially from Web2) for shortcut engines to feel natural?
Developers need to shift from thinking in actions to thinking in outcomes. In Web2 and traditional Web3 development, the focus is on defining every step manually. But in an intent-driven model, you define what you want, not how to get there, and let the engine handle finding the best route. That requires trust in orchestration layers, but more importantly, a philosophical shift: abstraction is not a loss of control, it’s a gain in efficiency. Web2 devs already work with high-level APIs and compilers. Blockchain shortcuts are just the next evolution in Web3: reliable, proven paths of execution that fulfill intent requests.
Graphers and Action Providers form the core of how Enso generates and optimizes on-chain solutions. What have you learned from watching these roles in action?
The Enso network is powered by three core participants:
- Action Providers contribute modular smart contract abstractions.
- Graphers build algorithms that combine these actions into executable solutions. Only one solution is selected per request, so graphers are rewarded for finding the most optimal path.
- Validators secure the network by authenticating requests, verifying contributions, simulating transactions, and validating the final solution.
Each request to Enso incurs a query fee, paid in ENSO tokens and distributed across all three roles. This creates a flywheel: more usage leads to more rewards, driving further contribution, optimization, and decentralization.
At the time of writing, the Enso token sale is live on CoinList, giving everyone the chance to become part of and participate in the Enso network at favorable terms.
You’ve spoken before about how most Web3 teams are forced to “choose what frameworks they support” due to limited resources. Do you think we’re nearing a point where this kind of technical exclusivity will become obsolete?
Enso is working on making this obsolete by unifying all smart contracts, chains, and protocols into one network. Web3 teams will no longer be forced to choose from different frameworks, they will have a single point of access with read and write functionality to interact with any smart contract on any chain from a single integration. This will empower developers to build seamless, consumer-facing applications used by hundreds of thousands of users.
Enso recently hit a major milestone, achieving more than $3 billion in transaction volume. What’s next?
Supporting Berachain’s launch and their pre-deposit campaign “Boyco” as the main infrastructure provider was a big accomplishment for the whole team. Enso’s infrastructure processed $3.1B in 3 days, one of the largest liquidity migrations in DeFi’s history. It proved not only the value of Enso, but also demonstrated the reliability and scalability of the infrastructure under real conditions.
As a next step, Enso is evolving from a powerful API into a fully decentralized network. First, we will open up the Enso DeFi library, allowing anyone to contribute contract abstractions, broadening the opportunities, and enabling even faster development.
Enso is currently available on many EVM chains, and another large innovation will be expanding to Solana and Move based blockchains. This expansion will further enhance our customers’ ability to build composable applications and interact with all of the blockchain ecosystem through one source.
Disclaimer: The content shared in this interview is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice, investment recommendation, or endorsement of any project, protocol, or asset. The cryptocurrency space involves risk and volatility. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research and consult with qualified professionals before making any financial decisions. This interview was conducted in cooperation with Enso, who generously shared their time and insights. The content has been reviewed and approved for publication in mutual understanding. Minor edits have been made for clarity and readability, while preserving the substance and tone of the original conversation.
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Cryptocurrency
Cardano (ADA) Price Predictions for This Week

ADA failed to hold above 60 cents as it seeks support lower.
Key Support levels: $0.50, $0.45
Key Resistance levels: $0.64, $0.90, $1.3
1. Sellers Pushed ADA Under 60 Cents
With buyers remaining on the defensive, ADA’s price fell under 60 cents and appears unable to reclaim this key psychological level. At the time of this post, the price is under $0.58 and could fall to the support at $0.50 where buyers showed interests in the past.
2. Bearish Momentum Increases
The daily RSI fell into oversold territory on Sunday and bounced outside of this zone on Monday. However, at this time, this indicator is falling again. This shows weakness in the price action and inability of buyers to reverse this downtrend. Hopefully, the support at 50 cents will stop the selloff.
3. Sellers Dominate
The daily volume shows that sellers are making higher highs. They hold the initiative and can dictate price direction. Bounces are brief and are likely the result of shorts being closed which means sellers need to buy to close positions. Unfortunately, the price also made a lower low on Sunday which is a bearish signal.
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