CoinDesk reports that the Central Bank of Russia is working on a bill that will introduce an “experimental legal regime” for cryptocurrencies to be used exclusively in export-import deals, the head of the regulatory agency, Elvira Naiullina, said last Monday. 

The country’s government is also working on a bill that will create a national agency to license and supervise cryptocurrency platforms operating in Russia, wrote local newspaper Vedomosti on Tuesday, citing Sergei Altukhov, a member of Russian parliament’s economic policies committee. Altukhov added that a new tax code will be introduced for miners as a part of the regulation.

LCH, the clearinghouse arm of the London Stock Exchange Group, will offer clearing services for cash-settled bitcoin (BTC) index futures and options, reports CoinDesk. 

The separate service LCH DigitalAssetClear, part of the company's French arm, will finalize trades made on GFO-X, a U.K.-regulated digital asset exchange, LCH said.

“Bitcoin index futures and options are a rapidly growing asset class,” Frank Soussan, head of LCH DigitalAssetClear, said in a statement, citing “increasing interest among institutional market participants looking for access within a regulated environment they are familiar with.”

Solana Labs’ crypto-forward smartphone Saga will go on public sale May 8, the company behind the Solana blockchain said Thursday. Pre-ordered devices are shipping now, CoinDesk reports.

The new device from Solana Mobile costs $1,000 and is built on hardware from Bay Area smartphone company OSOM. It has 512 GB of storage, two versatile back camera lenses, a 6.67-inch OLED display and a fingerprint scanner. It will ship with the latest Android operating system installed.

What makes the Saga different, according to Solana, is the “Solana Mobile Stack” (SMS), a lineup of custom add-ons that integrate crypto usefulness into the phone’s hardware and software. SMS has ingrained security features to provide for sending, receiving, trading and storing crypto on the device.

Bitcoin climbed on Monday evening, topping the key psychological level of $30,000 as investors awaited key inflation data later in the week that could steer crypto prices, CNBC reports. 

The largest cryptocurrency by market cap rose 7% to $30,193.25 for the first time since June, according to Coin Metrics. Ether advanced more than 3.5% to $1,925.11 for the first time since August as investors awaited the Ethereum network’s latest tech upgrade, scheduled for Wednesday.

Now that bitcoin has touched $30,000, a move into the mid- to high-30s will be “likely” if it pushes through with conviction and would “force short speculators to cover and buy instead,” said James Lavish, managing partner at the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund. “Some investors are trying to get positioned ahead of that,” he said.

The baffling discovery (or rediscovery - see below) was recently made by developer and waxy.org writer Andy Baio, who stumbled upon the PDF document while trying to fix a problem with his printer, MacRmors reports.

Anyone with a Mac running macOS Mojave or later can see the PDF for themselves by typing the following command into Terminal:

open /System/Library/Image\ Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf

If you're running macOS 10.14 or later, the 184 KB Bitcoin PDF should immediately open in Preview.

The document can also be located via Finder: Navigate to Macintosh HD -> System -> Library -> Image Capture -> Devices, then open the Contents -> Resources folder. The whitepaper titled "simpledoc.pdf" should be in there.

Baio found that in the macOS Image Capture utility, the Bitcoin whitepaper is used as a sample document for a device called "Virtual Scanner II," which may or may not power Apple's Import from iPhone feature, and is either hidden or not installed for everyone by default.

Baio later discovered that he wasn't the first person to find the Bitcoin document or "Virtual Scanner II." An Apple Community post from 2021 queries its existence in macOS, in addition to a photo taken of a sign at San Francisco Bay's Treasure Island, after designer Joshua Dickens unearthed them in 2020.

Saudi Arabia has disclosed investments in nearly 40 US venture capital firms, including some deep in crypto, blockchain and Web3-related investments, Blockworks reports. 

Sanabil, the venture arm of the Saudi sovereign wealth vehicle Public Investment Fund, commits around $2 billion annually into multiple funding rounds to develop businesses with novel business models, according to its website.

The fund now lists investments in the likes of Andreessen Horowitz (A16z), Coatue Management, KKR and Peter Thiel-backed Valar Ventures. 

Funds associated with Web3 and blockchain: A16z, Polychain Capital, Griffin Gaming Partners, 500 Startups, 9Yards, B Capital, Collaborative Fund, Costanoa, Craft Ventures, Dragoneer, Greenoaks Capital, Human Capital, ICONIQ Capital, Insight Partners, KKR, Legend Capital, Race Capital, Soma Capital, TCV, Techstars, Third Point Venture, Uncorrelated, Valar Ventures, Valor Equity Partners and Village Global.