CoinDesk

Crypto asset prices slid on Thursday, building on Wednesday’s market-wide selloff spurred by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell disappointing investors with his comments on U.S. interest rate cut expectations for next year. Bitcoin’s (BTC) attempt to bounce back above $100,000 quickly faded earlier during the day and slid to the low-$97,000s during the U.S. day. … Read more

Every year, my company Emfarsis partners with the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) to conduct an industry-wide survey of blockchain gaming professionals. And every year, the overwhelming majority of respondents agree that digital asset ownership is the single biggest benefit that blockchain can bring to games; this year was no different, with 71.1% ranking it number … Read more

It took a while, but 2024 was the year bitcoin fulfilled a million end-of-year predictions to finally hit $100,000. Uncork the champagne if you like, but I believe bitcoin’s breach of this historic barrier is the harbinger of something even bigger, and that 2025 will be the long-awaited Year of Decentralization. The reason has very … Read more

As nations explore the implications of digital currencies, Bitcoin is becoming part of national strategies. El Salvador made headlines as the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, while the United States is considering a national Bitcoin reserve. Even China, despite its cautious stance on cryptocurrency, has embraced blockchain technology to support its digital … Read more

El Salvador is in the process of securing a $3.5 billion deal with the International Monetary Fund, but is making some concessions around bitcoin (BTC) to get the funding. Stacey Herbert, director of the Bitcoin Office in El Salvador, posted on Thursday that the government-issued Chivo wallet — launched in 2021 in a bid to … 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 3644.43, down 0.3% (-9.33) since 4 pm ET on Wednesday. Four of 20 assets are trading higher. Leaders: HBAR (+3.1%) and APT (+2.9%). Laggards: AVAX (-3.7%) and ICP (-3.7%). … Read more

EMBARGOED UNTIL 19 DECEMBER 2024 @ 9:00 AM ET Blockchain security firm Blockaid said a full 59% of crypto tokens introduced this year were “malicious in nature.” The number of nefarious tokens being sold into the open market ties in with the rising memecoin narrative that has been consistent throughout this cycle. There are now … Read more

Curve founder Michael Egorov was liquidated for 918.83K CRV ($882,000) after CRV fell by more than 12% over the past 24-hours. The head honcho of the decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform suffered a series of mammoth liquidations earlier in 2024 after taking out loans to purchase CRV and bolster the price. $140 million in total … Read more

Ilya Lichtenstein, who pled guilty last year to charges related to the 2016 theft of 120,000 bitcoin from Bitfinex, has made his first public statement since his 2022 arrest. In a five-minute video posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday, Lichtenstein reiterated that he was the hacker and that he acted alone, denying speculation in … Read more

Wednesday, Dec. 18, will go down in history as a day of market panic triggered by the 25 basis point Fed rate cut and Chair Jerome Powell’s hawkish outlook. Bitcoin (BTC) briefly tumbled below $100,000; U.S. equities dropped around 3%, while the dollar index (DXY) index soared to a two-year high of 108, which continues … Read more

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise) If you were looking forward to a quiet Christmas away from your computer, expecting bitcoin to rise steadily through the year-end, forget it. Looks like the Fed has dashed those plans. First of all, Chair Jerome Powell’s comments distancing the central bank from President-elect Donald Trump’s … Read more

Craig Wright, who falsely claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin, is in court again. This time, the Crypto Open Patent Alliances is arguing Wright’s attempt to sue for 900 million pounds ($1.1 billion) over intellectual property rights related to the Bitcoin system in October amounts to contempt of court after a … Read more

Another bitcoin miner, Hut 8 (HUT), has decided to pull the trigger on buying bitcoin in the open market, following the likes of MicroStrategy (MSTR) and MARA Holdings (MARA). The Miami, Florida-based company said it bought about 990 bitcoin for an average price of $101,710 each. The latest purchase will bring the amount of bitcoin … Read more

BTC’s rise to record highs earlier this week is expected to allow miners to extend their November profitability into December, according to a report by investment bank Jefferies on Wednesday. Bitcoin mining economics improved in November as the average price of bitcoin was 31% higher while the average network hashrate rose by almost 4%, the … Read more

The year 2024 has marked a significant breakthrough for digital assets, particularly for bitcoin (BTC), driven by increased institutional adoption. This shift has occurred through two key avenues: first, the integration of bitcoin into public balance sheets as a treasury asset, and second, the success of U.S. spot-listed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that have amassed over … Read more

World Liberty Financial, backed by the family of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, on Wednesday exchanged about $10 million worth of Coinbase’s (COIN) wrapped bitcoin, cbBTC, for rival WBTC. Wrapped bitcoin is a form of the world’s largest cryptocurrency that can be used in decentralized finance (DeFi) on blockchains other than Bitcoin. Coinbase introduced cbBTC in … Read more

Crypto traders initial worries about a hawkish Fed materialized Wednesday as Chairman Jerome Powell cut interest rates but expressed uncertainty about the speed and extent of future easing. And now the sentiment has deteriorated. Bitcoin’s seven-day call-put skew shows that Deribit-listed put options offering downside protection and expiring in one week are trading at the … Read more

A bitcoin (BTC) slump spiraled into over $700 million worth of liquidations across futures tracking major tokens, with XRP and dogecoin (DOGE) products recording unusually high losses. BTC fell under $100,000 in late U.S. hours before slightly recovering during early Asian hours Thursday, as the Federal Reserve hinted at a few rate cuts in 2025. … Read more

This is our final Crypto for Advisors newsletter of 2024. We are taking a break next week to relax before what we believe will be an action-packed 2025 in the crypto space. This year, we’ve published 51 newsletters dedicated to educating advisors about digital assets. Our readership has nearly doubled from 24K to 44K active … Read more

As 2024 draws to a close, cryptocurrency stands at a turning point. Bitcoin has crossed the $100,000 mark and digital assets have solidified their place in investment portfolios of all sizes. Yet, amid these milestones, a critical, yet overlooked issue remains: the estate planning challenges unique to cryptocurrency and other digital assets. A Looming Crisis: … Read more

BOB, the “hybrid layer-2” network seeking to make Bitcoin the center of the decentralized finance (DeFi) universe, has taken a step toward that goal by integrating with BTC restaking protocol Babylon. An abbreviation of “Build on Bitcoin,” BOB’s aim is to establish Bitcoin as the foundational network for DeFi by creating bridges between itself and … Read more

When Michael Saylor announced MicroStrategy’s conversion of $250 million in Treasury reserves to bitcoin in August 2020, Wall Street analysts dismissed it as a reckless gamble. “Superior to cash,” Saylor declared of bitcoin at the time, drawing skepticism from traditional banking circles. Yet today, those same banks that sneered at bitcoin’s corporate adoption are now … Read more

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Marc Hochstein, CoinDesk’s deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards. In this issue: Solana was the biggest draw for new crypto developers in 2024 No wonder: Solana’s transaction volume is off the charts Coinbase alums take next step … Read more

Banking giant Deutsche Bank is building out a layer-2 rollup network on Ethereum with Matter Labs’ ZKsync technology. Bloomberg reported the project Wednesday, and a representative for Matter Labs confirmed the story. The chain will be “a public and permissioned L2,” Omar Azhar, the head of business development at Matter Labs, told CoinDesk over Telegram. … Read more

The U.S. Federal Reserve lowered its benchmark fed funds rate by 25 basis points to the 4.25%- 4.50% range, its third consecutive easing move this year and now marking a total of 100 basis points of rate cuts since September. Market participants had fully expected Wednesday’s move by the central bank, but recent data had … Read more

No one can argue with 2024 being a breakthrough year for crypto. BTC and ETH ETFs launched, BlackRock spearheaded bitcoin adoption, a pro-crypto president was elected and BTC broke the 15-year all-time-high, to name a few. But the inflection point for crypto still awaits. Here are three predictions for 2025 that can help spark it: … Read more

Kraken, the seventh-largest crypto exchange, said its layer-2 rollup network, built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, has gone live. The network, called Ink, is based on the OP stack, a customizable framework that lets developers build their own rollups using Optimism’s technology. The team had originally planned for Ink to go live in early … Read more

Following the U.S. presidential election, crypto’s headwinds have seemingly dissipated. Since early November bitcoin has reached $100K amid regulatory wins such as the nomination of crypto-friendly Paul Atkins to replace Gary Gensler as SEC chair, the naming of crypto advocate David Sacks as the incoming White House “AI and Crypto Czar,” and Congressman French Hill’s … Read more

Donald Trump’s victory in the November presidential election is already ushering in a new era for crypto in the U.S., JPMorgan (JPM) said in a report Wednesday, noting that the total cryptocurrency market cap has jumped about 65% since his reelection. “Not only does this new administration bring a sense of crypto friendliness, but it … Read more

Earlier this year, some users of wrapped bitcoin wBTC were dismayed to find its issuer BitGo was sharing custody of their bitcoin (BTC) with BiT Global, a Hong Kong-based crypto custodian partly owned by TRON founder Justin Sun. The episode “reopened old wounds inflicted by previous centralized custody failure,” even though it did not expose … Read more