CoinDesk

While bitcoin (BTC) continues to reach new lifetime highs, the latest options market trend indicates that traders aren’t chasing the uptrend with the same zeal as before. On Monday, BTC’s price rose above $107,000, surpassing the previous peak on Dec. 5 and taking the cumulative post-U.S.-election gain to over 50%, CoinDesk data show. The rally … Read more

While Vancouver’s City Council has passed a motion to explore becoming a ‘bitcoin-friendly city’, British Columbia still has a province-wide ban on mining BTC until December 2025. B.C.’s bitcoin mining ban began in December 2022 to address energy concerns, and it faced a legal challenge from Conifex Timber, which the B.C. Supreme Court upheld in … Read more

IP-backed memecoin Simon’s Cat (CAT) surged 50% Monday after becoming the first cat-themed token to get a coveted Binance spot listing — amid some meme tokens taking the plagiarism heat. CAT zoomed from $0.000039 to a record peak of $0.000067 in early Asian hours Tuesday, data shows, before paring gains. Trading volumes rose tenfold from … Read more

Ripple’s upcoming RLUSD stablecoin is attracting bids upto 836 XRP ($2068) on onchain marketplaces ahead of its Tuesday release, a sign of frenzy among enthusiasts who may want to be the first to hold the token. These bids range from 500 XRP ($1237) to as much as 836 XRP ($2068) as of Asian morning hours … Read more

Crypto wallet company Exodus Movement (EXOD) has been approved to list on the NYSE American, the New York Stock Exchange’s sibling market. Exodus, which will be listed under its current ticker at the open of trading on Dec. 18, was originally meant to be listed on NYSE American in May, but the U.S. Securities and … Read more

I will remember 2024 as the year blockchain broke through. The transformations started early and just kept coming. What’s astounding to me is that at no time during this year did the overall direction or the market change. The only thing that happened was constant acceleration. At the end of 2023, we already knew that … Read more

Ripple, an enterprise-focused blockchain service closely related to the XRP Ledger (XRP), said it will start making its highly-anticipated U.S. dollar stablecoin accessible to users on Tuesday, Dec. 17 following the token’s regulatory approval. RLUSD will be initially listed on several exchanges and crypto platforms including Uphold, MoonPay, Archax and CoinMENA, the company said in … Read more

Avalanche, a layer-1 blockchain launched in 2020 that’s now the tenth-largest by total value locked (TVL), activated its highly anticipated Avalanche9000 upgrade Monday, marking the ecosystem’s biggest technical changes to date. The network has been prepping for these changes for months, with new features that will cut the costs for sending transactions, operating validators and … Read more

Every year, bulls and bears use short-term case studies to forecast crypto armageddon or exponential growth. And every year, neither group is right. Some notable events this year: Ethereum’s Dencun Upgrade, the U.S. election, crypto ETFs, Wyoming’s DUNA, the wBTC controversy, Robinhood’s Well’s notice, Hyperliquid’s near $2 billion airdrop, Bitcoin hitting $100,000, and SEC Chair … Read more

Web3 has long struggled with mainstream adoption. We have yet to achieve the true cultural relevance that other cutting-edge technologies enjoy. Our most widely used product as an industry is cryptocurrency itself, but even our biggest advocates now realize that coins alone will not be enough to provide the consumer breakthrough we have been building … Read more

Dear President Elect Trump, As the co-head of a major law firm’s digital assets practice, I am hopeful that your nominee to chair the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) will make much-needed (and long-overdue) reforms to the way the SEC approaches crypto market regulation in the United States. However, as you know, it will take some … 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 3805.48, down 1.7% (-64.94) since 4 pm ET on Friday. Two of 20 assets are trading higher. Leaders: LINK (+5.2%) and BTC (+2.2%). Laggards: HBAR (-11.3%) and ICP (-7.1%). … Read more

Red-hot decentralized finance (DeFi) project Ethena said Monday it is rolling out its new stablecoin that aims to help stabilize the protocol’s flagship USDe token when crypto markets turn bearish. The USDtb token aims to keep a steady $1 price and holds 90% of its reserves in BUIDL, the tokenized money market fund issued by … Read more

Bitcoin (BTC) mining economics continued to improve this month, as the hashprice, a measure of daily profitability, rose 5% from the end of November, JPMorgan (JPM) said in a research report Monday. The hashprice increased as the rally in the world’s largest cryptocurrency outpaced the rise in the network hashrate, the report said. The hashrate … Read more

Disclaimer: The analyst who wrote this piece owns shares of MicroStrategy (MSTR) and Semler Scientific (SMLR). Self-described bitcoin (BTC) development company MicroStrategy (MSTR) has increased its bitcoin holdings to a total of 439,000 BTC following its latest purchase of 15,350 BTC with the acquisition finishing on Dec. 15. MicroStrategy disclosed that the 15,350 BTC purchase … Read more

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise) Imagine you have a rare collectible. It’s aged like fine wine, but only shows the original price tag. That’s how U.S. companies have been told to value their bitcoin … stuck in the past instead of reflecting its true worth. As of today, that changes. Yes, … Read more

The U.K. intends to prohibit public offers of crypto, the Financial Conduct Authority said in its paper on the incoming crypto regime on Monday. Legislation will be put in place to prohibit public offers of crypto, building on the U.K.’s promotion rules that prevent unregistered crypto firms from reaching out to U.K. clients. Only crypto … Read more

Surging volumes in put options linked to BlackRock’s Nasdaq-listed spot bitcoin ETF (IBIT) could be interpreted as bearish sentiment. That’s not necessarily the case. On Friday, more than 13,000 contracts of the $30 out-of-the-money (OTM) put option expiring May 16 changed hands as the ETF rose 1.7% to $57.91, according to data from Amberdata. Volume … Read more

Bitcoin (BTC) set a fresh record above $106,000 earlier Monday, with traders now targeting the $120,000 level as the asset moves into the second half of a seasonally bullish December. Recent catalysts that have supported growth in BTC include increased speculation of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump creating a federal bitcoin reserve, and crypto companies such … Read more

Bitcoin (BTC) surged to over $106,000 in early Asian hours, setting new all-time highs before quickly retreating to $104,500 amid concerns about the upcoming U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) rate cut. The U.S. central bank is expected to reduce the benchmark borrowing cost by 25 basis points to the 4.25% to 4.5% range, marking a total … Read more

MicroStrategy (MSTR) is set to soon be included in of the world’s largest exchange-traded funds after becoming the first bitcoin-centric company to win entry into the Nasdaq-100 Index. The Nasdaq-100 Index tracks the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange and is filled with dominant market names like Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, … Read more

Michael Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital (GLXY) has hired former Point72 chief financial officer Anthony Paquette to serve in the same role at the crypto financial services firm. He will replace Alex Ioffe, who will transition into a senior adviser role, the company said in a statement on Friday. Paquette previously spent four years as the CFO … 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 3837.79, down 0.0% (-1.86) since 4 pm ET on Thursday. Nine of 20 assets are trading higher. Leaders: HBAR (+5.5%) and APT (+3.7%). Laggards: RENDER (-2.6%) and SOL (-2.1%). … Read more

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise) Bitcoin and ether’s bull momentum has hit a roadblock. The U.S. Producer Price Index (PPI) came in hotter than expected Thursday, prompting investors to tighten their stances and keep a bid for the dollar, as we anticipated. There’s also the Truflation index stirring up concern. Seen … Read more

Disclosure: The author of this story owns shares in MicroStrategy (MSTR). Since Donald Trump won the U.S. election on Nov. 5, bitcoin (BTC) has soared from $67,000 to around $100,000. This has coincided with a huge rise in bitcoin’s total trade volume which has now surpassed $100 billion. According to checkonchain data, bitcoin futures trading … Read more

MicroStrategy (MSTR), the software company founded by Michael Saylor, is not the only large-scale corporate buyer of bitcoin (BTC), JPMorgan (JPM) said in a Wednesday report. Crypto miners are also adopting the accumulation strategy. The shift to building up bitcoin holdings is driven by growing pressure on profitability, which stems from the reward halving in … Read more

Societe Generale said it carried out a blockchain-based repurchase agreement with the Banque de France in what it called the first such tokenized transaction with a euro-zone central bank. The lender’s digital assets-focused subsidiary, SG-Forge, deposited as collateral some bonds issued in 2020 on the public Ethereum blockchain in exchange for central bank digital currency … Read more

A Polygon DAO community cohort is considering a proposal to use its more than $1 billion of idle stablecoin reserves, currently held on the Polygon PoS Chain bridge to capture yields, per a pre-proposal governance post. “The PoS Bridge currently holds around $1.3B of stablecoins, which makes it one of the largest, but also idle, … Read more

Bitcoin (BTC) is not the only one setting milestones. HyperLiquid, the leading on-chain perpetuals trading protocol operating on its custom-built layer 1 blockchain, is setting impressive records, too, with the platform seeing more activity in ether (ETH) than bitcoin. The cumulative perpetuals volume on the platform has surged past $500 billion, registering a staggering 15-fold … Read more

Donald Trump-backed World Liberty Financial just increased its holdings of Chainlink’s LINK token. The project purchased another $1 million worth of LINK late Thursday, data shows, for the second straight day, increasing its LINK stash to $2 million worth of tokens. It additionally brought $246,000 worth of Aave’s AAVE, taking total token holdings to $1.2 … Read more