Animal spirits in the crypto industry continue to be evident amid the eased regulatory stance of the Trump administration, with leading U.S. spot exchange Coinbase (COIN) in advanced acquisition talks with leading global derivatives exchange Deribit, reports Bloomberg. According to the story, the companies have notified Dubai regulators (where Deribit is licensed) about the discussions. … Read more
South Korean financial authorities are planning sanctions against crypto exchanges who are operating illegally in the country, business newspaper Hankyung reported on Friday. The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) classified a number of exchanges who are not registered as Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) as targets for sanctions, according to the report. The exchanges targeted – … Read more
Right now, my X feed is full of people who are giving up on Web3 gaming. I get it. Over $12 billion of venture capital funding has gone into it since 2020 and they haven’t seen the sort of breakout success that many expected. Even the best games haven’t reached anything close to mainstream scale. … Read more
The German financial supervisory authority BaFin said it identified “serious deficiencies” in Ethena’s synthetic USDe stablecoin. Ethena is the yield-generating protocol. The stablecoin has a market cap of $5.4 billion. Ethena said on X that it will “continue to evaluate alternative frameworks,” after being notified that the “application under the MiCAR regulatory framework will not … Read more
Markets-wise, crypto was flat this week. Bitcoin was rangebound ($83,000 to $84,000). And the CoinDesk 20, which tracks about 80% of the market, stayed at about 2,600. Crypto prices suffered from being increasingly correlated with the wider financial markets, which are down on tariff worries and decreased corporate earnings. Some even said the bitcoin bull … Read more
HK Asia Holdings (1723) said it bought another 10 bitcoin (BTC) for $858,581. The Thursday purchase took the Hong Kong-listed company’s total to around 18.88 BTC at a cost of roughly $1.72 million. The acquisitions were made via open market transactions and funded through internal cash reserves. In a statement, the company said it views … Read more
A mysterious crypto trader that made millions trading derivatives this year has been identified as William Parker, a convicted fraudster, according to blockchain sleuth ZachXBT. Parker made $6.8 million on one position after going long on BTC just before Donald Trump’s weekend announcement of a U.S. strategic crypto reserve, per ZachXBT. He then turned around … Read more
The crypto industry’s Fairshake political action committee is flooding Republican candidates with last-minute money in special congressional elections in Florida. Two U.S. House of Representatives seats had been opened by resignations when their occupants were tapped for posts in President Donald Trump’s administration, including that of Matt Gaetz, the politician Trump sought for the attorney … 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 2642.5, down 1.0% (-27.91) since 4 p.m. ET on Thursday. Five of 20 assets are trading higher. Leaders: DOT (+2.1%) and AAVE (+1.6%). Laggards: SUI (-5.1%) and FIL (-3.3%). … Read more
Short-term price dips are par for the course in bitcoin’s (BTC) bull markets, but one indicator suggests the current decline from recent highs may reflect a deeper structural shift in market dynamics. Bitcoin was trading around $84,000 as European morning hours on Friday, a 23% drop from its January peak of $109,000. The fall has … Read more
Strategy (MSTR) will likely soon be in the market for additional sizable bitcoin purchases after pricing an upsized sale of its latest preferred stock issue. The company sold 8.5M shares of its 10% Series A Perpetual Strife Preferred Stock at price of $85 each, raising roughly $711.2M. Strategy initially had hoped to raise $500M. The … Read more
The Trump administration is preparing to restructure the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and integrate blockchain technology into its procurement system, Wired reported, citing a memo circulating among State Department staff. The plan proposes rebranding the agency as U.S. International Humanitarian Assistance and moving it directly under the authority of the Secretary of State, … Read more
A key gauge of economic sentiment and corporate credit health has receded from its recent multi-month highs in a positive development for risk-taking in stocks and crypto markets. The relief, however, could be short-lived, per some observers. The indicator in consideration is the ICE/BofA U.S. High Yield Index Option-Adjusted Spread (OAS), which measures the average … Read more
By James Van Straten (All times ET unless indicated otherwise) With just over a week to go until the end of March, the first quarter has been disappointing, particularly in terms of price action rather than narrative for the crypto industry. Bitcoin (BTC) has dropped 10%, its worst first-quarter performance since 2020, and ether (ETH) … Read more
Just when it appeared that the yen scare could be easing, Japan has reported an uptick in core inflation. Data released early Friday showed Japan’s core inflation, which stripes out prices for fresh food, rose 3% year-on-year in February, moderating from January’s 3.2% but beating the consensus forecast for 2.9%. The headline consumer price index … Read more
Real-world assets (RWAs) are now a $10 billion category, according to data curated by DeFiLlama, with Maker, BlackRock’s BUIDL and Ethena’s USDtb each accounting for more than $1 billion in total value locked (TVL). Of the three, USDtb — a stablecoin designed to contrast with Ethena’s USDe — has had the fastest growth, adding over … Read more
Over the past 30 days a net $180 million has flowed out of U.S. spot bitcoin (BTC) ETFs, among the highest rates of withdrawals since they started trading at the beginning of 2024. The ETFs have disappointed in 2025, with sluggish inflows largely driven by bitcoin’s weak price performance, which is down roughly 10%. While … Read more
Bakkt Holdings (BKKT) is bringing on Akshay Naheta as co-CEO and entering a strategic partnership with Naheta’s payments startup, Distributed Technologies Research (DTR), as the firm moves to unlock new revenue streams. Naheta, a former SoftBank executive with past investments in Nvidia and ARM, will officially join Bakkt’s leadership team from today. Alongside current CEO … Read more
Bitcoin (BTC) and other major tokens lost more than 3% as Thursday’s rally was met with profit-taking during Asian morning hours Friday — in line with expectations. Overall crypto market capitalization fell 3.2% in the past 24 hours, with BTC sliding from $86,000 to under $84,000, ether (ETH) dropping below $2,000 and Solana’s SOL falling … Read more
The Australian Government announced an ambitious whole-of-government approach to regulating and integrating digital assets into the broader economy, inspired by work done in the European Union (EU) and Singapore. In a white paper published by the Australian Treasury, the country’s government says it will embrace tokenization, real-world assets (RWAs), and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) … Read more
Tokyo-based Metaplanet is forming a strategic board of advisors with Eric Trump as one of the appointees, as the company continues to spur bitcoin (BTC) adoption, according to a press release on Friday. “We are honored to welcome Eric Trump as the first member of our Strategic Board of Advisors and look forward to welcoming … Read more
The Lazarus Group, a hacking group closely associated with North Korean, holds more bitcoin (BTC) than Tesla (TSLA), the electric car manufacturer led by Elon Musk, according to data from Arkham Intelligence. At press time, Lazarus held 13,441 BTC worth $1.14 billion, according to data source Arkham Intelligence. That’s 16% more than Tesla’s bitcoin stash … Read more
It turns out Polymarket is a crystal ball, which can predict certain events with nearly 90% accuracy, according to a Dune dashboard compiled by New York City-based data scientist Alex McCullough. McCullough studied Polymarket’s historical data and removed markets with probabilities above 90% or below 10% after outcomes were already known but not yet settled, … Read more
U.S. national banks have been told by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that they’ll no longer have to answer how controversial customers might damage their reputations — a point that had been criticized by crypto companies and insiders arguing that it contributed to them being debanked. The OCC is removing that factor … Read more
Paul Atkins, the nominee to take over the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, is set for a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing next week, putting President Donald Trump’s pick for the SEC chairmanship on track to start working as soon as next month. At the same March 27 hearing, the Senate panel is also weighing the … Read more
Proof-of-work cryptocurrency mining does not trigger federal securities laws, according to a Thursday staff statement from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) which told mining operators they do not need to register their transactions with the regulator. The statement, published by the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, declared that both solo proof-of-work crypto mining … Read more
Stock and other traditional financial asset traders across the world are wanting to be able to buy and sell assets around the clock, resulting in two of the biggest stock markets in the U.S., Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) making moves to offer round-the-clock trading soon. “We definitely see that this is … Read more
Bitcoin miners are facing renewed financial pressure as declining transaction fees and a hashprice drop push operational costs higher, according to TheMinerMag’s February 2025 report. Bitcoin’s hashrate climbed 3.8% in February to 810 EH/s, showing a slowdown in mining competition growth. However, the hashprice (the revenue that miners earn per unit of computing power) slipped … Read more
Tether, the crypto company behind the largest stablecoin USDT, said it would rank as the seventh largest net buyer of U.S. Treasury securities in 2024 among countries. The firm purchased a net $33.1 billion worth of U.S. Treasury securities last year, according to a compilation posted on Thursday by CEO Paolo Ardonio using data from … Read more
A year ago, restaking was one of the hottest areas of crypto, and projects like EigenLayer were heralded as the next big thing. Fast forward to mid-2025 and total value locked (TVL) has fallen across the sector and the hype that surrounded point farms has withered away. Through it all, Ether.fi, the market leader, has … Read more