The Justice Department dropped its criminal investigation of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, removing the last obstacle to Kevin Warsh's confirmation. Warsh, who holds $192M in assets including 30+ crypto positions, could be confirmed as early as this week as the Senate Banking Committee schedules a vote.
The Justice Department dropped its criminal investigation of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, removing the last obstacle to Kevin Warsh's confirmation. Warsh, who holds $192M in assets including 30+ crypto positions, could be confirmed as early as this week as the Senate Banking Committee schedules a vote.
On April 24, the Department of Justice dropped its criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over cost overruns in a Fed building renovation project. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said the DOJ asked the Fed's inspector general to look into the matter and issue a report instead.
The move removes the key obstacle blocking Kevin Warsh's confirmation as the next Fed Chair. Republican Senator Thom Tillis had pledged to block the vote as long as the DOJ pursued the Powell investigation. Within hours of the announcement, Kalshi's prediction market odds for Warsh's confirmation before May 15 surged from approximately 30% to over 80%.
Warsh would be the most crypto-exposed Federal Reserve Chair in history. His financial disclosure reveals direct investments in Compound, dYdX, Solana, Optimism, Polymarket, Lightning Network, and dozens of other crypto companies through venture fund structures. He earned $10.2M consulting for Stanley Druckenmiller's Duquesne Family Office, a prominent crypto macro investor.
The Fed Chair directly oversees:
Warsh has pledged to divest his crypto holdings, but his intimate knowledge of the ecosystem — and his relationships with key crypto investors — represents a fundamental shift in how the Fed approaches digital asset policy.
The last Fed Chair with any meaningful crypto exposure was Jerome Powell, who publicly stated he personally held no crypto. Warsh's portfolio is a different universe — not passive BTC through a brokerage, but active venture bets in the specific protocols and infrastructure the Fed regulates. This is like appointing someone with venture stakes in regional banks to run bank supervision.
The OCC granted Circle final approval to establish Circle National Trust, a federally supervised national trust bank, placing the world's second-largest stablecoin (USDC, $73.2B) under direct federal banking oversight — with reserve management as a planned future capability.
Morgan Stanley amended SEC filings for its proposed Ethereum (MSSE) and Solana (MSOL) ETFs with a 0.14% management fee — the lowest in crypto ETFs — while offering staking yield (50-80% ETH, up to 100% SOL). Its Bitcoin ETF (MSBT), launched just April 8, already holds $364M.
SWIFT announced its blockchain-based shared ledger is ready for initial use, with 17 Tier 1 banks across six continents preparing to pilot live tokenized deposit transactions. The network — used by 11,500+ financial institutions and moving the equivalent of global GDP every 2-3 days — built the ledger in just nine months, marking the most significant mainstream blockchain deployment by traditional finance infrastructure.