CoinDesk

U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Acting Chair Caroline Pham said Tuesday the regulatory agency has reorganized its enforcement division to “refocus” on fraud and “stop regulation by enforcement.” Under former Chairman Rostin Behnam, the CFTC’s Division of Enforcement had a variety of task forces, including one focused on insider trading, another focused on cybersecurity … Read more

The rally in bitcoin (BTC) and crypto from the weekend’s tariff-induced panic has proven to be a short-lived one. Late in the U.S. trading day, bitcoin was down 4.8% over the past 24 hours to $96,900 after having climbed up to the $101,000 level just two hours earlier. Much of the altcoin sector fared worse, … Read more

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) newly-created Crypto Task Force is working to create long-awaited regulatory clarity for the crypto industry, according to a Tuesday statement from Commissioner Hester Peirce. Pierce, who was appointed by Acting Chair Mark Uyeda to spearhead the Crypto Task Force, laid out 10 of the group’s priorities, including resolving … Read more

Taproot Wizards has raised $30 million with which it plans to build an ecosystem of applications using the OP_CAT Bitcoin improvement proposal (BIP). OP_CAT is a feature that Bitcoin’s pseudonymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto included in the software’s original code but which he/she/they removed out of concerns that it exposed it to risks such as denial-of-service … Read more

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Acting Chairman Mark Uyeda unveiled a list of the agency’s newly-appointed executive staff on Tuesday, including three members of the Crypto Task Force. Two of the task force’s appointees come from within the SEC’s ranks. Richard Gabbert, who formerly served as a counsel to crypto-friendly task force head … Read more

The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate are forming a joint working group to advance crypto legislation, and David Sacks, the crypto czar appointed by President Donald Trump, said his aim is “ensuring American dominance in digital assets” in an appearance Tuesday at a joint press conference in Washington. Alongside the chiefs of the congressional … Read more

The artificial intelligence (AI) world was taken by storm a few days ago with the release of DeepSeek-R1, an open-source reasoning model that matches the performance of top foundation models while claiming to have been built using a remarkably low training budget and novel post-training techniques. The release of DeepSeek-R1 not only challenged the conventional … Read more

Solana-focused Canadian investment company Sol Strategies purchased 40,300 SOL between Jan. 19 and Jan. 31, for approximately $9.9 million at an average price of $246.53 per token. The Toronto-based company, which runs three mainnet Solana validators, said that it now holds 189,968 SOL worth roughly $40.89 million purchased at an average price of C$256.21 per … Read more

Ethereum is facing an identity crisis. Its native token, ether (ETH), is underperforming against competitors, and longtime builders are beginning to question whether the chain’s technology is falling behind—and if its community is losing focus. The Ethereum Foundation, the nonprofit that stewards Ethereum’s development, has been blamed for many of the network’s struggles. Co-founder Vitalik … Read more

The opening shot is being been fired in the new Congress’ crypto push with a plan for a Tuesday introduction of a stablecoin oversight bill from Senator Bill Hagerty. The legislation would set up a U.S. regulatory framework for issuing the dollar-denominated tokens, according to a person familiar with the effort. The Tennessee Republican, who … Read more

Blockchain firm Neptune Digital Assets (NDA) said it bought 1 million dogecoin (DOGE) tokens through what the company said was a “strategic derivative purchase” on Dec. 27. The Vancouver, Canada-based company, which focuses on cryptocurrency and blockchain infrastructure, is down significantly on the investment. The memecoin has dropped 27% to 27 cents since the purchase. … Read more

Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, crashed hard Monday as prospects of a U.S.-led trade war weighed on risk assets. Data shows investors likely bought the dip, snapping up coins at lower prices. According to analytics firm IntoTheBlock, ether worth almost $1 billion left centralized exchanges Monday, the highest single-day net outflow since January … Read more

Coinbase (COIN) users lost over $65 million to social engineering attacks in the past two months with an estimated $300 million lost to such attacks annually, crypto sleuth ZachXBT said in an X post Monday. The actual figure lost might be higher, because the amount doesn’t include unreported cases, ZachXBT said. Coinbase has not publicly … 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 3366.83, down 0.8% (-28.06) since 4 p.m. ET on Monday. Three of 20 assets are trading higher. Leaders: ETH (+3.5%) and SUI (+0.9%). Laggards: UNI (-4.2%) and DOT (-4.1%). … Read more

Almost half of the state governments in the U.S. are either on a path toward putting some of their money into crypto or already have, and much of a suddenly booming interest in tying their financial futures to the digital-assets markets has come after U.S. President Donald Trump showed support for a national stockpile of … Read more

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group (CME) has revealed that in the first month of the year, its crypto contracts saw an average daily volume (ADV) of 198,000 with a notional value of $13.6 billion. The CME detailed in a press release on Tuesday that year-over-year, its cryptocurrency ADV rose 180% as its micro bitcoin (BTC) … Read more

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) is looking to increase its headcount, with more than half the added roles dedicated to regulating crypto, according to a two-year budget plan presented to the Legislative Council, the region’s legislative body known as Legco. Despite freezing its headcount in three of the five financial years since 2020, … Read more

Travala, the travel website that accepts payments in cryptocurrency, has teamed up with trivago (TRVG), adding its inventory of 2.2 million properties to the hotel search platform. When trivago users select a Travala hotel they will be redirected to the website, where they will have the option of paying in bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and … Read more

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise) If you follow financial markets, you’ve probably come across the terms “risk-on” and “risk-off.” Now we seem to be entering a new era of “tariffs on/tariffs off.” In a risk-on environment, growth-sensitive assets like stocks and cryptocurrencies tend to rise due to expectations of economic expansion … Read more

WazirX creditors can start to receive their stolen crypto as early as April, or in 2030, based on the outcome of a voting scheme, scheduled for the coming weeks. Creditors of the hacked Indian crypto exchange will have to vote on whether to approve the restructuring scheme. If the majority, or more than 75% by … Read more

Bitcoin (BTC) hashrate has reached another all-time high, with seven-day moving average jumping to 833 exahashes per second (EH/s), according to Glassnode data. This represents a 9% increase from 767 EH/s in the past few days. According to Miner Mag, pre-orders for mining hardware have begun to decline following the pre-halving surge. Many mining firms … Read more

Bitcoin (BTC) continues to follow the trajectory of its 2017 cycle. Despite recent market turbulence, driven by escalating tariff tensions between the U.S and its neighbouring countries, as well as China. Bitcoin remains up approximately 525% from its cycle low during the FTX collapse in November 2022. Comparatively, at the same stage in the 2017 … Read more

Anthony Scaramucci, who served as President Donald Trump’s communications director for less than a week in 2017, said he expects pro-crypto regulation to be drafted in the U.S. by November. The founder of investment firm SkyBridge Capital made the prediction in an appearance at the Digital Assets Forum in London and went on to explain … Read more

Galaxy Digital (GLXY), the cryptocurrency trading company helmed by Mike Novogratz, is bringing its blockchain staking capabilities to regulated custody specialist BitGo Trust, despite the legal spat between the two firms. It makes sense to play nice: The deal brings Galaxy’s staking and validator services, which handle over $4 billion billion in staked crypto assets, … Read more

The outlook for alternative cryptocurrencies appears grim relative to bitcoin as a renewed trade war potentially breaking out between the U.S. and its major trading partners may threaten to destabilize the global economy. Still, some coins are flashing bullish hints. For instance, the XRP/BTC ratio is teasing a move above the upper Bollinger band on … Read more

Crypto exchange Kraken secured a Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) license in the European Union. Kraken was able to obtain the license that will enable it to offer crypto derivatives products in the block of 27 nations by acquiring a Cypriot investment firm which had the license from the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission … Read more

Howard Lutnick, the chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald and President Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. Commerce Secretary, was recently playing defense during another nomination hearing in front of Senate Democrats about the financial services giant’s investment in Tether, the company that issues the world’s largest stablecoin, USDT. Lutnick appeared before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, … Read more

Decentralized lending protocol Aave processed millions in liquidations Monday without accruing any new bad debt, showcasing its resilience during market volatility, data from Chaos Labs shows. The crypto market wilted early Monday, with the price of bitcoin (BTC) falling to nearly $91,000 from $100,000 as concerns of a renewed trade war between the U.S. and … Read more

The Ethereum network’s capacity to handle more transactions increased further late Monday as validators agreed on a gas limit increase for the first time since late 2021, also the first time in the network’s Merge era. The gas limit on Ethereum reached nearly 32 million gas units as of Tuesday morning with a maximum expected … Read more

Crypto majors zoomed as much as 20%, before reversing, in the past 24 hours as a buy-the-dip strategy following Monday’s $2.2 billion turned profitable for risk-takers, although gains were wiped as China announced retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. The bump saw a pull back during the Asian morning hours as the deadline for the U.S. … Read more