Author: Coindesk

An intellectual property (IP) ownership could soon end up in a fight of digital dogs.Own The Doge DAO, a collective that holds the original ‘doge’ meme, on Tuesday said it had acquired the rights to use pet shiba inu Neiro’s images and was holding a community discussion on which NEIRO token can continue to use the dog’s liking.“We’re pleased to announce that @kabosumama has officially granted our DAO the Neiro IP,” Own The Doge said on X. “When Atsuko revealed the name of her new adopted dog, Neiro, many tokens were launched in an attempt to capitalize on her name…

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. Fed chair Jerome Powell then said at a post-FOMC press conference that the central bank wasn’t allowed to own bitcoin under current regulations — in response to a question about President-elect Donald Trump’s strategic reserve promises.”That’s the kind of thing that Congress should consider, but we…

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 highest implied volatility premium to call options since September, according to data source Amberdata. In other words, put options are the most expensive relative to calls in three months.Its a sign of traders scrambling to hedge their bullish bets against a potential continuation of Wednesday’s…

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance posted a list of “alpha watchlist tokens” to one of its Telegram channels on Wednesday, causing a spike in the mentioned tokens, however it then clarified that the information was “false” which led to the tokens giving up their newfound gains.The post read: “Ready to explore early stage crypto projects?” before naming Wise Monkey (MONKY), Happy Cat (HAPPY), Rifampicin (RIF), Zircuit (ZRC) and ai16zeliza (ELIZA) as five projects with “strong fundamentals” and “active communities.”Several traders speculated over whether the Telegram group was fake and trying to lure people into a rug pull, but it turns out that…

A Binance delisting decision sent prices of defunct crypto exchange WazirX’s WRX tokens down 60% in an hour, even as the exchange hopes for a “fresh start” of its platform.Binance said Wednesday that it was delisting WazirX’s WRX, along with Kaon (AKRO) and Bluzelle (BLZ), as part of a regular review of tokens that no longer meet its offering standards.Delisting a token from major exchanges is often perceived as a lack of confidence in the token’s viability or future, triggering a negative market sentiment around the affected token. Prices of AKRO and BLZ fell as much as 40% after the…

Plume, a blockchain network focused on real-world assets, raked in $20 million in fresh funds in a Series A fundraising round, the platform told CoinDesk on Wednesday.Investors participating in the round included Brevan Howard Digital, Haun Ventures, Galaxy Ventures, Lightspeed Faction, Superscrypt, Hashkey, Nomura’s crypto arm Laser Digital, A Capital, 280 Capital, SV Angel, Reciprocal Ventures and others. The fresh investment round followed a $10 million seed fundraising in May led by Haun.With the investment, the team plans to speed up the development of its own layer 1 blockchain. Plume’s mainnet launch is slated for early next year, the press…

Crypto degens have a new – and, if all goes according to plan, faster, cheaper and safer – way to trade Runes, the Bitcoin ecosystem’s answer to memecoins.An automated-market maker (AMM) for the Runes protocol is being deployed on Stacks. It’s the first AMM for such tokens on that Bitcoin layer-2 network. The AMM went live on Wednesday, following the unveiling of Stacks’ native BTC-backed asset sBTC on Tuesday.The teams behind decentralized exchange (DEX) Bitflow Finance and Bitcoin bridge Pontis developed the AMM, a tool that facilitates trading through algorithmic means to improve liquidity. They announced the project Wednesday.The Runes…

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 appointment to head the House Financial Services Committee. With election season coming to a crypto-favorable close in 2024, some are forecasting “altcoin” season, a period of outperformance for non-BTC crypto assets, to continue in 2025 — but is this the right way to characterize digital…

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 shown continued solid economic growth and perky inflation. This turned the focus today to the policy statement, updated economic projections and the upcoming press conference with Chairman Jerome Powell for clues about the Fed’s thinking on future policy actions.The Fed’s quarterly economic projections — which include the…

Banking giant Deutsche Bank is building out a layer-2 rollup network on Ethereum with ZKsync technology developed by Matter Labs.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. When asked to elaborate, he referred a reporter to another participant in the project, Memento Blockchain, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Generally “public permissioned” means anyone can see what’s happening on the network but only authorized participants can do certain…