Dubai’s crypto regulator has issued an alert, warning of firms falsely claiming to be part of the city’s high-profile real estate tokenization pilot, saying that such misrepresentation may violate the emirate’s virtual asset laws. The Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), in coordination with the Dubai Land Department (DLD), said on Tuesday that several entities have … Read more
Metaplanet (3350) has reached a major milestone in its bitcoin (BTC) strategy, the Japanese hotel company now holds 5,000 BTC as part of its treasury operations. Its BTC stash is valued at approximately $428.1 million at an average acquisition cost of around $85,621 per coin. The Tokyo-listed firm continues to double down on bitcoin as … Read more
Major tokens fell as much as 5% on Thursday as traders took profits on a steady move higher from earlier this week, with memecoin dogecoin (DOGE) leading losses among the largest assets. Bitcoin (BTC) clung to the $93,000 zone in the past 24 hours, but XRP, Solana’s SOL, BNB Chain’s BNB and DOGE showed losses … Read more
Bitcoin’s (BTC) breakout to $93,000 is being driven by deep-pocketed institutions, not retail exchange traded-fund (ETF) buyers, said Coinbase Institutional’s John D’Agostino on CNBC. The rally began in early April, as institutional investors, and sovereign wealth funds quietly accumulated BTC with their “patient pools of capital” while retail investors were still pulling capital from spot … Read more
DeFi Development Corp (JNVR), formerly known as Janover, added another $9.9 million in Solana’s SOL to its corporate treasury, pushing total crypto holdings to 317,273 SOL or about $48 million, the company said on Wednesday. The purchase, made through BitGo’s over-the-counter desk, includes a tranche of locked SOL. These are tokens typically tied to vesting … Read more
Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Margaux Nijkerk, the Ethereum protocol reporter on CoinDesk’s Tech team. In this issue: Vitalik Buterin Proposes Replacing Ethereum’s EVM With RISC-V Matter Labs, ZKsync Developer, Sued for Alleged Intellectual Property Theft Scroll’s Euclid Upgrade Pushes It Into ‘Stage … Read more
Canada will host an election next week, where voters will consider a range of issues — the economy, housing, trade relations with the U.S. — as they choose their elected officials, who in turn will choose the next Prime Minister of the country. You’re reading State of Crypto, a CoinDesk newsletter looking at the intersection … Read more
The crypto market’s rally stalled on Wednesday after U.S. Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent reiterated that a proper trade deal between Washington and Beijing would take years to ink out. Bitcoin (BTC) is up 2.6% in the last 24 hours and 12.2% in the last seven days, trading at $93,600 for the first time since … Read more
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the founder of now-defunct crypto and foreign exchange investment company PGI Global, with violating federal securities laws, alleging he ran a “Ponzi-like scheme” that defrauded investors of nearly $200 million — and spent $57 million of customer money on Lamborghinis, real estate and luxury goods. Ramil Palafox, … Read more
Over the past several years, global discourse around blockchain has been dominated by the United States — its legislative gridlock, inter-agency turf wars, and intermittent moments of regulatory clarity. As the U.S. continued to grapple with its internal contradictions, other jurisdictions have sought to fill the void. Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, and Gibraltar positioned … Read more
TRUMP, marketed as Donald Trump’s official crypto token, rallied on Wednesday as an invitation to a dinner event with the U.S. President for token holders appeared on the project’s website. “Join President Donald J. Trump at his Private, Members-Only Club in Washington, D.C. for Dinner!,” a banner about the event on the project’s website said. … Read more
A project aiming to expand Bitcoin’s utility is tackling the collateral requirements of bridging the blockchain to programmable layer 2s. Rollup project Citrea deployed its Clementine Bridge on the Bitcoin testnet. The bridge uses the BitVM2 programming language to expand the provision for decentralized finance (DeFi) on Bitcoin, by using it to verify layer 2s … Read more
Shares of Sol Strategies (HODL), a Toronto-listed digital-asset firm, jumped after the company said it secured an up-to $500 million convertible note facility to ramp up its investments focused on the Solana network. The capital will be exclusively used for purchasing SOL tokens and expand the firm’s blockchain validator operation, the company said in a … Read more
This is a daily technical analysis by CoinDesk analyst and Chartered Market Technician Omkar Godbole. Bitcoin (BTC) has finally surpassed a key resistance that limited recovery rallies earlier this year, after rising over 5% to $93,500 in 24 hours. The leading digital asset by market value has topped the “Ichimoku Cloud,” confirming a bullish shift … Read more
They call him “El Presidente.” But unlike the other President, Dave Portnoy draws a line at launching a memecoin. He worries his followers will lose their shirts. “I got involved in memecoins because I wanted to launch a Barstool memecoin, but I didn’t want my fans and followers to lose money,” he said in an … Read more
The maturation of DeFi technology has created a paradox: while battle-tested codebases and rising technical proficiency have lowered the barrier to entry for launching new protocols, securing sustainable liquidity has never been harder. As thousands of projects built on increasingly standardized infrastructure compete for a finite pool of capital, the ecosystem faces a systemic challenge … Read more
In an earlier piece, I introduced the concept of the “Shopification of Wealth”, or the idea that on-chain rails can lower the barriers to entry and radically scale operations for financial advisors and wealth managers. Just as Shopify enabled anyone to launch a retail business online, crypto is enabling a new generation of investment professionals … Read more
Rice Robotics and dog-themed utility project Floki will soon launch the Minibot M1, a Floki-branded AI-powered companion robot that works on the RICE AI platform. Floki will support the company in its blockchain push as it moves towards tokenizing its brand and AI data marketplace through TokenFi, a Floki sister project focused on tokenizing real-world … Read more
Galaxy Digital (GLXY) said it deepened its strategic partnership with CoreWeave (CRWV), reinforcing its ambitions in the fast-growing artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) data center industry. Under a new agreement, CoreWeave will gain access to an additional 260 megawatts (MW) of critical IT load at Galaxy’s Helios data center campus in West Texas, … Read more
Maple Finance is quietly becoming one of the most important bridges between decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional finance. Co-founded by Sidney Powell in 2021, the institutional crypto lending platform has facilitated over $5 billion in loans and is increasingly positioning itself as the infrastructure layer for tokenized private credit — a sector TradFi is rapidly … Read more
Bitcoin (BTC) miner Riot Platforms (RIOT) has struck a $100 million credit agreement with Coinbase’s credit arm, using bitcoin as collateral to secure short-term funding for its ongoing expansion. The publicly traded mining firm said in a press release it would draw on the facility over the next two months. The deal offers Riot, which … Read more
CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index. The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 2759.21, up 4.7% (+124.59) since 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday. All 20 assets are trading higher. Leaders: SUI (+18.5%) and AAVE (+9.4%). Laggards: BCH (+0.8%) and LTC (+1.7%). The … Read more
Disclaimer: The analyst who wrote this piece owns shares of Strategy (MSTR) Traders shorting Strategy (MSTR), the bitcoin buyer whose share price gained 13% in March, may be struggling to find enough stock to repay the lenders who underpinned their bets the company’s value would fall. More than $180 million worth of trades in MSTR … Read more
Fundraising for sophisticated crypto investment vehicles has yet to fully experience the anticipated positive headwind of the Donald Trump presidency, according to a new report by the Crypto Insight Group. Momentum “remains positive but slower than [fund] managers anticipated under the new Trump administration,” the Hedge Fund Outlook 2Q25 report said. “Net inflows continue, yet … Read more
Scroll, the Ethereum layer-2 network, shared Wednesday that it has launched its Euclid upgrade, which the team called its most significant protocol transformation to date. According to Scroll Labs, a key consequence of the upgrade is that it transitions Scroll from a “stage 0” to a “stage 1” rollup, meaning the network will retire some … Read more
Almost all cryptocurrency firms should be compliant with anti-money laundering (AML) transparency rules this year, a set of requirements around the sharing of certain information about the originator and beneficiary of transactions known as “the Travel Rule,” according to an annual survey carried out by crypto AML specialist Notabene. Notabene surveyed 91 virtual asset service … Read more
The team behind the Symbiotic network, the restaking protocol meant to rival EigenLayer, shared Wednesday that it had raised $29 million in a Series A round. The funding will expand the current team and contribute to the protocol’s Universal Staking framework, broadening its efforts from just restaking to including providing support for other staking activities. … Read more
Coinbase (COIN) has established the industry’s most scaled crypto trading platform with a domestic market share of around 66%, broker Benchmark said in a report Wednesday, while also initiating coverage of the stock. Benchmark assumed coverage of Coinbase with a buy rating and a $252 price target. The shares were over 4% higher at around … Read more
PayPal is upping the ante in the stablecoin wars as it’s set to begin offering U.S. users 3.7% annual returns on balances of its PayPal USD (PYUSD) stablecoin. The yield, accrued daily and paid monthly in PYUSD, is designed to spur adoption by making the token more appealing and stand out among the competition, Bloomberg … Read more
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise) For bitcoin bulls, it’s a case of “heads I win, tails you lose.” It’s risk-on-time and boding well for BTC, which rose above $94,000 to mark a more than 50% retracement of the sell-off from record highs above $109,000 to $74,000. The cryptocurrency has experienced a … Read more