Today in crypto, lawmakers in Poland have approved a strict bill regulating the crypto asset market, Hyperliquid launched 4,600 Hypurr NFTs on HyperEVM, with one selling for over $460,000, and Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov claimed intelligence services wanted him to censor political content.
Poland advances strict crypto bill, sparking public backlash
Polish lawmakers approved a bill regulating the crypto asset market, introducing key restrictions and establishing a dedicated supervisory authority.
Poland’s lower house of parliament, the Sejm, voted in favor of a Crypto-Asset Market Act on Friday, sending the bill to the Senate for consideration.
Bill 1424, which has yet to reflect the apparent third-reading vote in the Sejm, introduced a licensing regime for crypto asset service providers (CASPs), aligning Poland’s regulations with the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework.
The bill’s passage has sparked a strong community response over its restrictive provisions, which introduce criminal liability for violations, including fines up to 10 million Polish zlotys ($2.8 million) and prison terms of up to two years.
The bill designates the Polish financial supervision authority, the Komisja Nadzoru Finansowego (KNF), as the primary regulator of the country’s crypto asset market.
Under the legislation, all CASPs — including exchanges, issuers and custody providers, both domestic and foreign — must obtain a license from the KNF to operate in Poland.
To secure a license, CASPs are required to submit a comprehensive application detailing their corporate structure, capital adequacy, internal controls and compliance systems, risk management policies and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) procedures.
Early Hyperliquid user sells airdropped Hypurr NFT for $467,000
Early adopters of the perpetuals-focused layer-1 blockchain Hyperliquid were rewarded handsomely on Sunday after the Hyper Foundation finally airdropped the much-awaited Hypurr non-fungible token collection.
At the time of writing, the Hypurr NFTs have a current floor price of around 1,458 Hyperliquid (HYPE), or $68,700, according to OpenSea data.
However, there have already been eye-watering sales well above that range. The Hypurr #21 NFT with the extremely rare “Knight Ghost Armor” and “Knight Helm Ghost” traits went for 9,999 HYPE, worth $467,000, on Sunday.
Pavel Durov claims French intelligence wanted Telegram to censor Moldovan election content
Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov claimed that French intelligence officers asked him to censor political content on the messaging platform related to the election in Moldova, which he refused to do.
Durov said the officials approached him and indicated that if he censored the content, they would put in a good word with the judge overseeing his legal case in France. He wrote in a Telegram post on Sunday:
“The Telegram team received a second list of so-called ‘problematic’ Moldovan channels. Unlike the first, nearly all of these channels were legitimate and fully compliant with our rules. Their only commonality was that they voiced political positions disliked by the French and Moldovan governments. We refused to act on this request.”
Durov has routinely been critical of the French government and the European Union for pro-censorship policies, and his case continues to be watched by the crypto community and online free speech and privacy advocates.