[PRESS RELEASE – Victoria, Seychelles, April 25th, 2025] Bitget, the leading cryptocurrency exchange and Web3 company, has published its monthly Proof of Reserves (PoR) report for April 2025, which shows its continued commitment to transparency and user asset security. The latest verification confirms that Bitget maintains highly secure collateralized reserves, with an industry-leading 191% overall […] …

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The planning commission of Vilonia, Arkansas, unanimously rejected a proposal to establish a cryptocurrency mining facility within the city limits, following strong opposition from residents.

According to local reports, the decision came after weeks of community pushback, where citizens voiced concerns over potential noise pollution, increased energy consumption and the overall environmental impact associated with crypto-mining operations.

During public meetings, Vilonia residents expressed concern that the mining operation could disrupt the town’s quiet atmosphere and strain local infrastructure.

Many pointed to examples from other regions where similar facilities led to rising electricity costs and constant noise from mining rigs.

“I just want to ask, like, did we make a mistake moving here? We’re not asking these people to come here. I grew up here. I graduated from Vilonia, and we [are] Arkansas, the natural state, not Arkansas, the Bitcoin state,” one community member told THV11.

Vilonia community members oppose a new crypto mine in their town. Source: YouTube

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Vilonia has a history of rejecting crypto mining

Vilonia has confronted the prospect of crypto mining before. In previous years, residents expressed disinterest in hosting miners, citing long-term sustainability concerns and minimal local economic benefits.

In 2023, the city’s planning commission denied Vilo AR permission to build a crypto mine in town and revoked its permit permanently.

The same year, Vilonia residents voiced strong opposition to a crypto-mining facility proposed by Green Digital near residential areas, citing concerns over constant loud noise from powerful mining computers and potential ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

In 2024, the Arkansas State House passed two bills that restrict cryptocurrency mining within the state.

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In January, Arkansas lawmakers introduced a bill that would ban crypto mining operations within 30 miles of any US military facility in the state.

Senate Bill (SB 60) was introduced by Senator Ricky Hill and House Speaker Brian Evans, aiming to amend the Arkansas Data Centers Act of 2023 to keep crypto mining facilities away from military installations. 

However, the Arkansas Senate’s City, County and Local Affairs Committee eventually rejected the bill.

The opposition to crypto mining centers in Arkansas follows a broader trend across various US municipalities where crypto-mining initiatives have faced increasing scrutiny.

In October 2024, a group of residents in Granbury, Texas, filed a lawsuit against Marathon Digital, alleging that its mining facility generated too much noise.

The lawsuit claimed that residents were experiencing physical symptoms from the noise, including fatigue, headaches, nausea, hearing loss, memory issues and even psychological problems.

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Learn MoreArkansas city rejects crypto mining proposal after community pushback

Bitcoin-native crowdfunding platform Geyser introduced a Bitcoin Launchpad, a new mechanism designed to gate campaign access through community engagement thresholds rather than immediate fundraising. The update was announced on April 25 via X, targeting early-stage Bitcoin projects seeking visibility prior to launch. Community attention as a new gate to capital The Launchpad mechanism modifies how […]

The post Bitcoin crowdfunding platform Geyser launches social-gated launchpad for Bitcoin projects appeared first on CryptoSlate.

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Ethereum core developers are considering a four times increase in the layer 1 gas limit as one of the key features for the next hard fork after Pectra, known as Fusaka.

The devs are proposing to test a raise in Ethereum’s gas limit to 150 million by the Fusaka hard fork, according to Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 9678, introduced on April 23 by Sophia Gold, a developer on the protocol support team at the Ethereum Foundation. 

During the last All Core Devs Execution (ACDE) meeting, there were discussions to make the gas limit increase a “key feature” of Fusaka, Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko said in an April 24 meeting summary. 

“To align on client defaults and keep this as a priority, we’ve drafted an EIP. It’s a bit unconventional, but not unprecedented (see EIP-7840). We plan to get it merged early next week and formally SFI it on the next ACDE,” Beiko said. 

“As we continue this work, we expect to identify changes that need to be made in-protocol to support a higher gas limit. This implies adding more EIPs to Fusaka, even though the fork scope is final.”

The next Ethereum upgrade, Pectra, is scheduled to go live on the mainnet in May. Fusaka has been flagged as possibly going online in late 2025.

Gas limit increase a priority ahead of Fusaka

As part of the motivation for increasing the gas limit, the developers said there was great interest in scaling layer 1 execution and that it could likely be done by implementing any new features.

However, it requires guidance from execution layer developers because “we expect to find bugs in clients at higher gas limits than currently used on mainnet,” which will “require time from client developers both to test and to fix any bugs that arise, therefore it makes sense to include as an EIP in a hard fork to commit to this.”

“While the gas limit is ultimately set by validators, we agreed that having an EIP to coordinate client defaults would help keep this a priority and ensure all clients update their defaults by the time Fusaka goes live,” Beiko said.

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The average Ethereum gas limit was around 30 million after increasing in August 2021, according to data on Ycharts. 

Validators supported raising the network’s gas limit on Feb. 4, increasing the maximum amount of gas used for transactions in a single Ethereum block. It’s just under 36 million at the moment, Ycharts data shows. 

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Learn MoreEthereum devs test a 4x increase in gas limit for Fusaka hard fork

The capital city of Slovenia — Ljubljana — has been named the world’s most crypto-friendly city by migration advisory firm Multipolitan.

The city outranked runners-up Hong Kong and Switzerland’s economic powerhouse Züric, which scored the same in the Crypto-Friendly Cities Index, found in its 2025 Crypto Report.

The index featured 20 cities and ranked their crypto-friendliness based on their regulations, tax environment, lifestyle factors and digital and crypto infrastructure.

Multipolitan said its evaluation included weighing areas such as a city’s licensing frameworks, capital gains tax rates, GDP per capita, housing affordability and internet speeds.

“The presence of crypto ATMs and retail adoption rates were analysed to reflect each city’s embedded cryptocurrency culture,” it explained. “High concentrations of these assets earned the top scores.”

The city-state of Singapore and the United Arab Emirates’ capital of Abu Dhabi were respectively ranked fourth and fifth after the second-place tie. Both cities were already attractive to businesses due to offering low or no taxes, but they’ve also worked to attract crypto companies with industry-specific licensing and regulatory regimes.

Madison, the capital city of the US state of Wisconsin, was the only city in the Americas to rank on the index, hitting the same 11th place score as Latvia’s capital of Riga, Qatar’s capital of Doha, and Saudi Arabia’s capital of Riyadh.

Slovenia’s crypto embrace

Slovenia also topped Multipolitan’s Crypto Wealth Concentration Index, combining crypto ownership rates and trading volumes, which reported that the average Slovenian crypto owner held around $240,500 worth of assets.

The figure outranked second-place Cyprus by over $65,000, with the average crypto-holding Cypriot hanging onto around $175,000. Hong Kong came in third with holdings averaging $97,500.

Related: Slovenia’s finance ministry floats 25% tax on crypto transactions 

The US ranked at the bottom of the 20-strong list, coming in 17th spot with average crypto holdings of around $23,300, just above Malaysia’s nearly $21,000 average holdings.

Slovenia, being part of the EU, regulates crypto under the bloc’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which the industry received as mostly positive.

The advocacy group Blockchain Alliance Europe is based in Ljubljana. The city also houses the blockchain real estate platform Blocksquare, which teamed up with Vera Capital on April 18 to tokenize $1 billion worth of US real estate.

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Learn MoreSlovenia’s capital of Ljubljana ranked as world’s most crypto-friendly city