Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson recently posted a “hypothetical poll” on the X social media platform asking the crypto community if they’d like to see a Cardano and Bitcoin Cash integration. 

The poll received more than 12,000 votes in its first 24 hours with a 66.3% early majority voting “Yes” to the proposal.

Ben Scherrey, founder and chief technology officer of blockchain firm Biggest Lab, posted commentary in favor of the move, stating that he’d “always thought there was some natural synergy between the two chains given the shared UTXO model that allows for high scalability and decentralization.”

While the community appears to support the idea of a Bitcoin Cash and Cardano integration, how such a partnership would form and function is a bit murky.

On the technology side, Hoskinson used the term “partnerchain.” This seems to imply Bitcoin Cash would have to be bridged or cross-chained in some form in order to operate with the proposed upgrades.

Assuming both development teams could agree on the technical aspects of the partnership, there would still need to be a consensus among stakeholders and developers.

Hoskinson’s discourse on social media comes as Cardano prepares for two “major upgrades” in 2024. The company is preparing for the “Chang” hard fork slated for sometime in the second quarter of 2024, as well as a new proof-of-stake model called “Ouroboros Leios.”

Hoskinson lauded the pending upgrades in his response to an April 7 video posted by crypto influencer Ben “Bitboy” Armstrong. In the video, Armstrong referred to Cardano as “dead.”

Coinbase crypto exchange and its CEO, Brian Armstrong, face a new class-action lawsuit alleging investors were deceived into buying securities and claims the company’s business model is illegal.

The lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California San Francisco Division, representing plaintiffs Gerardo Aceves, Thomas Fan, Edwin Martinez, Tiffany Smoot, Edouard Cordi and Brett Maggard from California and Florida, alleges that Coinbase’s digital asset sales knowingly violated state securities laws since the company’s inception.

The complainants claim Coinbase admitted it is a “Securities Broker” in its user agreement, making digital asset securities sold by the exchange as investment contracts or other securities. They also claim Coinbase Prime brokerage is a securities broker.

The plaintiffs seek full rescission, statutory damages under state law and injunctive relief through a jury trial. This lawsuit resembles another class-action suit alleging consumer harm from Coinbase’s sale of securities.

Coinbase has argued that secondary crypto asset sales didn’t meet securities transaction criteria and disputed the relevance of securities regulations.

This new lawsuit is distinct from Coinbase’s highly publicized legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which also questions whether tokens sold on Coinbase should be classified as securities. Coinbase has recently filed an interlocutory appeal in response to a judge’s decision allowing the case to proceed.

In an April 26 filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, John Deaton, the crypto lawyer currently running an election campaign to unseat Senator Elizabeth Warren, filed an amicus brief in support of a motion for interlocutory appeal on behalf of 4,701 Coinbase customers.

Coinbase reported a strong rebound in the first quarter of 2024, supported by an uptick in market performance and the launch of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. The exchange posted $1.6 billion in total revenue and $1.2 billion in net income for the first quarter, achieving $1 billion in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

Vodafone, a United Kingdom-based telecommunications provider, hopes to bring blockchain technology to smartphone users by integrating cryptocurrency wallets with subscriber identity module (SIM) cards. 

The ambitious move comes amid a company finance plan that reportedly involves Vodafone Idea — a separate entity operating in India that the Vodafone Group has a 45% stake in — taking on nearly $3 billion in debt, including $1.8 billion in loans over the next two years.

In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance Future Focus, Vodafone Blockchain Lead David Palmer discussed the company’s plans to integrate blockchain technology into smartphone sim cards.

Palmer elaborated on the figures he presented, stating that he expected there to be some eight billion smartphones in use by 2030 and predicting a surge in crypto wallets to 5.6 billion in the same time frame — enough to account for nearly 70 percent of all people on Earth.

Despite the financial wrangling occurring with India-based Vodafone Idea, which recently sold off $2.2 billion worth of shares ahead of a debt-raising plan worth a reported $3 billion, Vodafone Group has had a busy 2024.

The company entered into a 10-year strategic partnership with Microsoft to bring generative artificial intelligence (AI) services to Vodafone’s customers.

Upon announcing the deal, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took the opportunity to hawk the disruptive nature of his company’s AI technologies, declaring that the “new generation of AI will unlock massive new opportunities for every organization and every industry around the world.”

This isn’t the first time a company has worked to combine cell phone technology with blockchain hardware. Back in 2019, U.S. startup VaultTel announced its ambitions to create a physical wallet that could be slotted into a smartphone’s SIM slot.