Author: Coindesk
Solana-based bonk (BONK) led growth among dog-themed memes Saturday as bitcoin staged a recovery rally to above $98,000, a day after Friday’s bloodbath that pushed it near $93,000.BONK surged 30%, CoinGecko data shows, with dogecoin (DOGE), shiba inu (SHIB), dogwifhat (WIF) and floki (FLOKI) surging as much as 20%. The dog-themed token category gained 8% on average in the past 24 hours, beating a market-wide jump of 4.5% as tracked by the broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index.Memecoins are known for their high volatility and tend to outperform major tokens during price rallies, serving as a leveraged bet on the overall…
A war for on-chain market dominance may be brewing. The question: What will be the collateral of choice in the decentralized finance (DeFi) economy?As of press time, DeFi protocols across all ecosystems have locked in almost $126 billion in value, according to DeFiLlama data, inching closer every day to their 2021 high of $175 billion. The majority of those pledged funds take the form of ether (ETH) and derivatives like yield-producing staked ether liquid tokens (stETH) and wrapped eETH (weETH), with wrapped bitcoin (wBTC) and stablecoins as a whole competing for fourth and fifth place.But the team behind Bitcoin-based DeFi…
On a balmy evening in 2023 on the east coast of Spain, Olivier Acuña sat at his computer to transfer his life savings to another cryptocurrency wallet, as he had done hundreds of times before.“Sending crypto always induces anxiety,” Acuña told CoinDesk. This rang painfully true that night.As soon as Acuña hit send, it was over: $400,000 worth of crypto — all his money — was gone, pilfered by an anonymous phishing scammer. A piercing noise rang in Acuña’s ears, his temperature rose and his fists clenched.Acuña’s loss demonstrates that no one is immune to crypto hacks. He’s a seven-year…
YouTube competitor Rumble (RUM) is in a deal for a $775 million strategic investment from stablecoin giant Tether.Rumble will use $250 million of the money to support operations and the remainder to fund a tender offer for up to 70 million shares of its common stock at a price of $7.50, according to a Friday evening press release. That $7.50 is the same price per share Tether is paying for its stake.”I truly believe Tether is the perfect partner that can put a rocket pack on the back of Rumble as we prepare for our next phase of growth,” said…
There’s been a change of guard at the rankings of the $3.4 billion tokenized Treasuries market.Asset manager Hashnote’s USYC token zoomed over $1.2 billion in market capitalization, growing five-fold in size over the past three months, rwa.xyz data shows. It has toppled the $450 million BUIDL, issued by asset management behemoth BlackRock and tokenization firm Securitize, which was the largest product by size since April.Market cap of Hashnote’s USYC and BUIDL over time (rwa.xyz) USYC is the token representation of the Hashnote International Short Duration Yield Fund, which, according to the company’s website, invests in reverse repo agreements on U.S.…
Every few decades, a new technology emerges that changes everything: the personal computer in the 1980s, the internet in the 1990s, the smartphone in the 2000s. And as AI agents ride a wave of excitement into 2025, and the tech world isn’t asking whether AI agents will similarly reshape our lives — it’s asking how soon.But for all the excitement, the promise of decentralized agents remains unfulfilled. Most so-called agents today are little more than glorified chatbots or copilots, incapable of true autonomy and complex task-handling — not the autopilots real AI agents should be. So, what’s holding back this…
Tether, the crypto company behind the $140 billion cryptocrrency USDT, is working on an artificial intelligence (AI) platform and aiming to debut early next year, according an X post by CEO Paolo Ardoino. “Just got the draft of the site for Tether’s AI platform. Coming soon, targeting end Q1 2025,” Ardoino posted on Friday.Tether is known for issuing USDT, the most popular stablecoin in the market, but the company recently made significant efforts under Ardoino’s leadership to expand its business beyond stablecoin issuance.Read more: Tether’s Paolo Ardoino: Building Beyond USDTIt invested in several companies across sectors including energy, payments, telecommunications…
Crypto Twitter has been overrun by sentient, well informed chatbots which reply at the speed of refreshing your browser and can maintain hundreds of simultaneous conversations without missing a beat. To many, the rise of these on-chain agents is a welcome upgrade from human influencers like BitBoy and GCR, who have mixed track records and opaque incentives. These agents, like on-chain analyst AIXBT, have quickly risen to the top of crypto twitter influencer mindshare rankings, given their ability to respond at the speed of the internet and justify opinions with data.Today AIXBT is one of few agents that trades at…
The blockchain industry is on the brink of a major transformation, and 2025 will be the year everything truly starts to shift. But before we get there, it’s important to understand what’s been holding this technological revolution back.The current, traditional internet works because its infrastructure is scalable and connects users effortlessly, no matter where these users are located. The decentralized ecosystem, on the other hand, still struggles with issues stemming from fragmented liquidity and a clunky user experience that prevent the technology from reaching its true potential.For this new paradigm to truly become the “internet of value,” it needs to…
“Hawk Tuah” girl Hailey Welch said Friday she is “fully cooperating” with lawyers representing people who lost money investing in her crypto token, HAWK, which flopped in early December amid allegations of malfeasance.”I take this situation extremely seriously,” she said in a post on X. The viral TikTok star encouraged victims of HAWK coin to reach out to the law firm suing HAWK’s creators as she works to “uncover the truth” about the token.HAWK token — a memecoin on the Solana blockchain — imploded early this month at nearly the moment of its creation. On-chain observers have claimed insiders pocketed…