The Dubai Land Department (DLD), a government agency for the real estate industry, said it started a real estate tokenization pilot program, claiming to be the first property registration authority in the Middle East to use blockchain technology for property title deeds. The initiative was developed with the digital assets watchdog Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority … Read more
Privy, a provider of cryptocurrency wallet infrastructure, raised an estimated $15 million in a funding round led by Ribbit Capital. The company, which announced the funding on Wednesday, offers application programming interfaces (APIs) for developers to manage and integrate user data, allowing its customers to offer crypto services and other on-chain functions so that end … Read more
Two of the biggest forces in artificial intelligence (AI) — Elon Musk’s xAI and Nvidia — have joined BlackRock, Microsoft and investment fund MGX’s group to expand AI infrastructure across the U.S., the companies announced Wednesday. The fund — called the AI Infrastructure Partnership — at its formation in September of last year, said that … Read more
CoreWeave, one of the hottest players in the artificial intelligence (AI) sphere, filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on March 3. The company works closely with bitcoin (BTC) miner Core Scientific (CORZ); the two firms have inked a multi-billion dollar deal for Core Scientific to build hundreds of megawatts of infrastructure for CoreWeave to … Read more
Australia-based digital asset firm Zerocap is in a prime position to observe the development of the structured product space, having operated OTC, market making, derivatives and crypto custody businesses since it was founded in 2018. Here Zerocap’s head of sales Mark Hiriart discusses how these products are changing, a new semi-principal protected product his firm … Read more
Ethereum is set to discontinue its largest test network, Holesky, after it encountered challenges testing the forthcoming Pectra upgrade. The Ethereum Foundation (EF) said in a blog post on Tuesday that the network — a controlled environment for testing Ethereum infrastructure and upgrades — will begin winding down, with a full shutdown anticipated on Sept. … Read more
In recent weeks, President Trump has taken steps to draw investment to the United States. His proposed Gold Card would allow foreign investors to purchase legal status in the United States for $5 million. In his Joint Address to Congress, he lauded a $200 billion direct investment from Japan’s SoftBank. While there’s nothing wrong with … Read more
2025 will be the year banks jump back into digital assets, reversing years of caution due to a challenging regulatory and market environment. Following the withdrawal of SAB 121 and new guidance from a key federal banking regulator, banks are now back in the race to develop crypto strategies to service their clients and stay … Read more
XRP jumped 10% on Wednesday during U.S. morning hours as Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is set to drop its appeal against Ripple, the company closely adjacent to XRP tokens “This is it – the moment we’ve been waiting for. The SEC will drop its appeal,” Garlinghouse posted … 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 2652.8, up 3.4% (+86.98) since 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday. All 20 assets are trading higher. Leaders: NEAR (+7.3%) and AAVE (+6.1%). Laggards: BCH (+1.9%) and BTC (+2.0%). The … Read more
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the U.S. Federal Reserve’s monetary policy-making body, is slated to publish its rate review later in the day, along with growth and inflation projections and interest rate forecast. The widely-watched event is likely to breed crypto market volatility, spurring 3% to 5% price swings in bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) … Read more
Blockdaemon, a leading provider of crypto infrastructure, has acquired expand.network, a single API connection into the multifarious world of decentralized finance (DeFi), with a view to enabling big financial institutions to seamlessly access on-chain trading. The exact price paid for expand.network was not revealed, but Blockdaemon said the deal was worth double digit millions of … Read more
Ether (ETH) zoomed nearly 7% in the past 24 hours to lead gains among majors as traders await the results of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on Wednesday. ETH’s gains were coupled with a 4% gain in memecoin dogecoin (DOGE), which historically tends to act correlated to the asset’s movements. Other Ethereum-based memecoins … Read more
Utila, a digital asset operations platform, has raised $18 million in a Series A round to expand its multi-party computation (MPC) wallet solutions as institutional demand to manage digital assets is soaring, the company told CoinDesk. Nyca Partners led the round, with participation from Wing VC, NFX, Haymaker Ventures, Gaingels, and Cerca Partners. The latest … Read more
The Turkish lira (TRY) fell to a record low against the dollar following the surprise arrest of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rival and Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu. The currency slumped a record of nearly 41 per U.S. dollar, a 10% slide on the day. The volatility saw a sharp rise in trading volumes in the bitcoin-lira (BTC/TRY) … Read more
By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise) Cryptocurrency prices are seeing a slight recovery from Tuesday’s decline with bitcoin (BTC) gaining 0.5% and the broader CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) advancing 0.8% in the last 24 hours. The drop came before the Federal Reserve’s policy decision due later today. Interest rates are forecast to … Read more
The Digital Chamber will elevate Cody Carbone to be its chief executive officer next month, replacing founder Perianne Boring, who is stepping down after a decade atop the oldest U.S. crypto advocacy group. As it prepares for its latest Washington, D.C., blockchain summit next week, the Digital Chamber informed its members that Boring will be … Read more
A South Korean man who attacked the CEO of collapsed crypto firm, Haru Invest, is now facing a potential decade behind bars, according to local media reports. Prosecutors in Seoul have requested a 10-year prison sentence for someone local media is only identifying by his last name Kang, a man in his 50s who stabbed … Read more
The bitcoin (BTC) price showed little reaction after the Bank of Japan (BOJ) held its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 0.5% on Wednesday, a decision that aligned with market expectations, as policymakers assessed the potential impact of U.S. tariffs under President Donald Trump on Japan’s export-driven economy. The BOJ highlighted “high uncertainties” surrounding trade policies, … Read more
As bitcoin (BTC) looks to recover from its recent downturn, observers are looking to Wednesday’s Federal Reserve (Fed) rate decision to offer support, with some saying that an announcement to end the balance sheet runoff program, known as quantitative tightening, could be positive news for the market. The Fed will announce its rate review at … Read more
Solana-based decentralized exchange Raydium is set to start its own token issuance platform in the coming weeks to drive more revenue to the already-popular trading service. Raydium’s native RAY token is up 13% in the past 24 hours, beating a 1.62% gain in the broader market tracked by the CoinDesk 100 (CD100) index. Raydium’s LaunchLab … Read more
The U.S. State of North Dakota is close to creating a licensing regime for crypto ATMs after its Senate passed a bill that provides a regulatory framework for the industry. Originally introduced on Jan. 15, House Bill 1447 aims to protect consumers from scams involving crypto ATMs by mandating operators to issue on-screen fraud warnings … Read more
Untangled Finance and Moody’s Ratings have completed a Proof of Concept to move credit ratings on-chain by testing a system to allow for decentralized access to Moody’s financial data. The proof-of-concept, conducted on the Polygon Amoy Testnet, integrated Moody’s Ratings into Credio, Untangled Finance’s risk oracle. Using zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology, the system allowed credit … Read more
The recent security breach for around $1.5 billion at Bybit, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, sent ripples through the digital asset community. With $20 billion in customer assets under custody, Bybit faced a significant challenge when an attacker exploited security controls during a routine transfer from an offline “cold” wallet to a … Read more
Ethereum has undergone a big transformation in the last four years, starting as a network capable of handling just 15 transactions per second, and evolving to a powerhouse processing thousands, with transaction costs decreasing from $50 per swap to mere cents. L2s and rollups have helped scale Ethereum without compromising its decentralized ethos. But this … Read more
If you blinked you may have missed it: Solana’s SOL futures started trading on Monday on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the go-to marketplace for U.S. institutions, and unlike previous, historic CME debuts for bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH), it received little fanfare. The product booked $12.3 million in notional daily volume on day one … Read more
Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood, one of the earliest traditional financial investors in crypto, hopes to bring some of her company’s funds on-chain once the regulatory landscape allows companies in the U.S. to do so. “We think tokenization is going to be huge,” Wood said at the Digital Asset Summit in New York on Tuesday. … Read more
EOS Network, known for its scalable blockchain infrastructure, is rebranding to Vaulta as it pivots toward Web3 banking. The transition comes with a token swap that is provisionally scheduled for the end of May. It also comes with the launch of the Vaulta Banking Advisory Council, a group of financial and blockchain industry experts focused … Read more
Financial technology and crypto firms are applying for state or national bank charters, aiming to expand their business under the more crypto-friendly Trump administration as industry executives report a notable uptick in charter discussions and applications, Reuters reports. “We have seen a lot more interest. We are working on several applications now,” Alexandra Steinberg Barrage, … Read more
After a couple of sessions of good vibes, risk markets headed back into retreat on Tuesday, one day ahead of the results of this week’s U.S. Federal Reserve policy meeting. Bitcoin was trading at $81,300 at press time, lower by 3.5% over the past 24 hours. Solana (SOL), ether (ETH) and XRP were posting modestly … Read more