France’s state-owned bank says it will spend 25 million euros ($27 million) buying cryptocurrencies that support local crypto and blockchain projects.

Bpifrance said in a March 27 press release that it would back newly formed projects “with a strong French footprint” where it will receive tokens in return for its investment and will look to fund decentralized finance (DeFi), staking, tokenization and artificial intelligence.

It added that the plan, supported by the French Ministry of Economy and Finance, was to “promote emerging technologies and strengthen the French blockchain ecosystem.”

The global blockchain ecosystem is “currently booming” but the number of French funds taking part is still very limited, it said.

French digital and AI minister Clara Chappaz said public and private financing was “one of the keys to the sustainable positioning of our ecosystem on the international stage.”

Bpifrance deputy CEO Arnaud Caudoux said that it was convinced of the growing importance that blockchain companies “will take on in the years to come and want to increase French competitiveness and presence in the digital assets field.”

“The US is really accelerating its own crypto strategy, so this is all the more important,” Caudoux said at a press conference, as reported by Reuters. He added that Bpifrance had started to support crypto before the US started its own pro-crypto moves.

The bank said it had backed the blockchain sector for a decade and had invested over 150 million euros ($162 million), notably helping to finance the crypto hardware wallet company Ledger in 2014.

Bpifrance said it began testing limited investments through tokens in 2022, including a deal with the DeFi lending platform Morpho to buy its token — which has grown to be the 12th largest protocol by value at $3.24 billion, according to DefiLlama.

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Venture capitalists often take part in investments paid in tokens. PitchBook expects crypto VC deals to top $18 billion this year, a marked increase from the $13.6 billion raised in 2024.

Typically, a crypto platform that launches a token will allocate a portion of its supply to financiers subject to varying lockup periods where the tokens can’t be sold.

A portion of the token supply is usually immediately given to select public users in order to drum up liquidity, which can cause token values to slide if they cash out.

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ChatGPT creators OpenAI have introduced rate limits after a viral social media trend that saw nearly everything “Ghiblifyied” — turned into AI art in the style of the famous Japanese animation studio. 

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was one of the first to take part in the trend, posting a portrait of himself generated by the model on March 25 but said in a subsequent post two days later that all image requests have started to tax the firm’s infrastructure.

“It’s super fun seeing people love images in ChatGPT but our GPUs are melting. We are going to temporarily introduce some rate limits while we work on making it more efficient,” he said.

“Also, we are refusing some generations that should be allowed; we are fixing these as fast we can,” he added.

OpenAI launched the upgraded image generation offering in ChatGPT-4o on March 25, resulting in users splashing images across social media in the art style of Studio Ghibli — known for its anime films Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro.

Altman didn’t give a definitive timeline on how long the rate limits would last but said, “Hopefully, it won’t be long! ChatGPT free tier will get three generations per day soon.”

Rate limits are generally applied to help OpenAI manage the aggregate load on its infrastructure, according to OpenAI. 

Related: Ghibli memecoins surge as internet flooded with Studio Ghibli-style AI images

“If requests to the API increase dramatically, it could tax the servers and cause performance issues. By setting rate limits, OpenAI can help maintain a smooth and consistent experience for all users,” OpenAI says on its rate limit explanation page.

Along with the legions of others getting in on the trend, X and Tesla CEO Elon Musk shared an image mimicking King Mufasa from Disney’s The Lion King holding up a Shiba Inu. 

White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks also joined in, using the Studio Ghibli-art style on an image of himself at an event.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported on March 26 that OpenAI expects to more than triple its revenue this year to $12.7 billion, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Altman said on Feb. 12 his firm wants to ship GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 in the coming weeks or months.

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The US Securities and Exchange Commission has officially closed its investigation into Crypto.com, with no action taken against the crypto exchange, according to the firm’s CEO, Kris Marszalek.

”They used every tool available to attempt to stifle us, restricting access to banking, auditors, investors, and beyond. It was a calculated attempt to put an end to the industry,” Marszalek said in a March 27 X post.

”The fact that we not only persevered but became stronger is a testament to our vision and the community supporting it. Onwards!”

It comes seven months after the SEC issued a Wells notice to the crypto platform in August, signaling its intention to take legal action against the firm.

We are pleased that the current SEC leadership has made the decision to close its investigation into Crypto.com,” added Crypto.com’s chief legal officer Nick Lundgren in a March 27 statement, which accused the previous administration of abusing its authority to harm the crypto industry.

Crypto.com had filed a lawsuit against the SEC in October, two months after the Wells notice, accusing the Gary Gensler-led commission of overstepping its authority and taking a “misguided” approach to crypto regulation.

SEC continues to roll back previous enforcement actions

Crypto.com’s announcement follows a wave of other crypto investigations and lawsuits dropped by the SEC over the last five weeks, which affected the likes of Coinbase, Consensys, Robinhood, Gemini, Uniswap, OpenSea and more recently, Immutable.

The SEC also dismissed its civil enforcement action against crypto trading firm Cumberland DRW with prejudice on March 27.

Related: Ripple will drop cross-appeal in SEC case, get refund from lower court ruling

The SEC has adopted a far friendlier approach since Mark Uyeda started leading the commission as acting chair on Jan. 20 after the resignation of former chair Gary Gensler. The SEC established a Crypto Task Force led by SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce to support this new approach.

It also canceled a controversial rule that asked financial firms holding crypto to record them as liabilities on their balance sheets on Jan. 23.

Trump’s SEC chair nominee, Paul Atkins, is inching closer to becoming the SEC’s new leader after initially being held back by financial disclosures.

Meanwhile, Crypto.com partnered with Trump Media on March 24 to launch a series of “Made in America”-themed exchange-traded funds later this year.

Crypto.com will provide the infrastructure and custody services to supply the crypto tokens for the ETFs, which may include a basket of tokens, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL), XRP (XRP) and Cronos (CRO).

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The US Justice Department (DOJ) seized more than $200,000 in cryptocurrency intended to benefit the militant group Hamas it said in a statement on March 27.

The cryptocurrency with a total value of $201,400 was traced to fundraising addresses allegedly controlled by Hamas and used to launder more than $1.5 million in digital assets since October 2024.

The laundering occurred through a series of “virtual currency exchanges and transactions by leveraging suspected financiers and over-the-counter brokers,” the DOJ said. The funds are currently held in a combination of at least 17 wallets.

In January 2024, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, along with corresponding organizations in the United Kingdom and Australia, announced sanctions against networks and facilitators of crypto transactions linked to Hamas. Those sanctions were built on US Treasury sanctions from October 2023.

In January 2024, three families of victims of the Hamas attack against Israel sued Binance and its former CEO Changpeng Zhao, alleging that the exchange had provided “substantial assistance” to terrorists. In oral arguments, a lawyer representing Binance claimed the exchange had “no special relationship [with] Hamas […].”

Binance has faced scrutiny from the US government over alleged shortcomings in its Anti-Money Laundering controls. The exchange settled with the DOJ for $4.3 billion in November 2023.

More regulation needed?

According to a December 2024 report by the Congressional Research Service, Hamas has allegedly sought cryptocurrency donations since at least 2019, although the “scale and effectiveness” of these efforts have been unclear.

Terrorist organizations using crypto for fundraising have increasingly drawn the attention of the US, with some officials questioning whether the industry needed more supervision or regulation to stop such behavior.

According to a 2023 Chainalysis report, terrorism financing accounts for a very small amount of crypto usage, with illegal groups sticking to using traditional, fiat-based methods to fund operations.

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The current state of crypto is akin to the internet’s “America Online” (AOL) era during the late 1990s, when the user experience was clunky, technical, featured limited use cases, and moved at dial-up speeds, according to Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal.

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Nailwal identified several key areas of development to improve user experience, including seamless fiat on- and off-ramps, custody solutions that feature key recovery, and hardware wallets built into mobile devices.

“We are in the dial-up era of the internet where even connecting to the Internet was a tedious task, like you had to be a mini-engineer to be able to connect to the Internet — we are still there in crypto.” —Sandeep Nailwal

“We are probably still in 1998, and it is going to take at least 10 to 15 years to see crypto in its full glory,” the Polygon founder added.

The internet took between 30-40 years to achieve mass adoption and began with a limited number of use cases. In the late 1990s, the AOL era of the internet was primarily focused on email and basic web browsing, but today, the internet encompasses the entire economy.

Nailwal said that the current state of crypto is similar, with financial use cases, particularly market speculation, being the core focus of crypto at this time.

However, once the financial use cases have been fully developed and achieved sufficient adoption, crypto adoption will spread to alternative use cases such as decentralized social media, gaming, and other niche sectors, he said.

Related: Security concerns slow crypto payment adoption worldwide — Survey

Being in crypto today is being early to the party

Nailwal pointed out that even the base use case for cryptocurrencies, which is financial, has not been fully developed.

According to a February 2025 report from Bitcoin (BTC) financial services company River, only 4% of individuals worldwide own BTC — which is the original cryptocurrency with the largest market cap and has the most mainstream appeal.

The report found that BTC has only achieved about 3% of its total adoption path when institutions, the total addressable market, and proper portfolio allocations are considered.

This small number of BTC holders indicates that crypto mass adoption is still years away and signals that the entire industry is still in the early adopter phase of development.

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