Author: Coindesk

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 April and a rising network hashrate, the report said. Hashrate is the total computational power used to mine and process transactions on a proof-of-work blockchain and is a proxy for competition in the industry and mining difficulty.”This likely prompted miners to hoard or seek further…

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, holders of stablecoins onchain,” the pre-proposal reads. “At the current benchmark lending rate for the 3 major stables this is an opportunity cost of around $70M annually.”“The authors believe that DeFi as a whole has matured whereby assets held in the Polygon PoS bridge can be…

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 year-to-date rise, according to DefiLlama.The platform has seen an average daily volume of over $5 billion in the past seven days, accounting for over 45% of the total onchain perpetuals market activity of the past 24 hours.24-hour volume breakdown of the onchain perpetual market. (Dune, uwusanauwu)…

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 million.LINK is now World Liberty Financial’s fourth-largest holding after ether (ETH), bitcoin (BTC) and tether (USDT).Backed by the Trump family, World Liberty Financial is a unified platform where users can borrow and lend cryptocurrencies, create liquidity pools and transact with stablecoins. WLFI serves as a governance…

The power-hungry AI revolution is already spiking global demand for energy. That’s putting a bigger focus on nuclear energy, and with it — according to one venture capital company — the need for better ways to trade the fuel that makes fission possible.For crypto-focused VC firm Portal Ventures, the answer was downright radioactive. The firm is leading a $1.7 million round in Uranium Digital, a startup that tokenizes uranium ore for easier trading than was ever possible in the highly regulated metal’s surprisingly underfinancialized market.A “major nuclear renaissance from AI” is afoot, predicted Portal Ventures General Partner Catrina Wang. Her…

The Pudgy Penguins NFT collection is keeping Web3 hopes afloat in a sea of dead NFT projects and a generally muted collectibles market.The non-fungible token set became the world’s second most-valued NFTs on Wednesday, with the minimum — or floor — price for any of the 8,888 comic penguins topping $100,000 and flipping the collections’ value above its comic monkey forerunner, the Bored Apes Yacht Club.That means buying a single NFT now costs more than a bitcoin, which currently trades at just over $100,000.The floor price has jumped 76% in the past seven days to over 26 ether (ETH), or…

Shares of bitcoin miner Hut 8 (HUT) jumped nearly 12% in pre-market trading amid social media speculation that it is building a data center with Facebook owner Meta Platforms (META).The shares climbed to just under $30 as of 10:00 UTC. The CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI), which offers broad exposure to the BTC mining sector, rose about 3% higher.Neither Miami, Fla.-based Hut nor Menlo Park, Calif.-based Meta has announced a partnership.**Speculative Post**Hut 8 appears to be partnering with Meta to develop a groundbreaking AI data center in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. While not officially confirmed, I’m led to believe…

This is the second in a series of stories examining the crypto industry’s high-stakes 2024 foray into politics and campaigning. The first explored the electoral track record of Fairshake PAC’s strategy.While politicians battled each other across the 2024 U.S. electoral map, the crypto industry ran an unprecedented test of a 14-year-old Supreme Court decision that had dynamited a new tunnel into politics for corporate cash.Thanks to a 2010 high-court case, a company can spend as much as it likes to bolster political allies and destroy enemies. It’s constitutionally protected speech, and crypto businesses spoke loudly this year.Seeing business interests influencing…

Appearing set for a run to a new record high earlier on Thursday, bitcoin (BTC) fell sharply in U.S. afternoon trading as tumbling bond markets took a toll on risk assets.The positive price action came as President-elect Donald Trump said “we’re going to do something great with crypto” while ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, reiterating his ambition to embrace digital assets in the U.S. and create a strategic bitcoin reserve. Alongside, the European Central Bank trimmed its benchmark interest rates by 25 basis points and in its dovish policy statement hinted that more rate cuts…

Haliey Welch, widely recognized as “Hawk Tuah,” transformed her fleeting viral fame into a formidable media empire. With a burgeoning social media presence (230K followers on Instagram), lucrative brand partnerships, and the successful podcast Talk Tuah, Welch appeared to be transitioning from internet personality to business mogul.That was until the 22-year-old launched her memecoin, $HAWK. Now Hawk Tuah isn’t flying so high.$HAWK was launched on the Solana blockchain with considerable fanfare, initially skyrocketing to a $491 million market cap. This meteoric rise was short-lived, as the coin’s valuation plummeted to under $20 million, according to data from DEX Screener.The rapid…