Author: Coindesk

Economists have long theorized about “perfect markets” — where buyers and sellers operate with complete information, zero transaction costs, and frictionless exchange. Despite technological advances, this ideal remains elusive in today’s fragmented digital economy.Our current commerce landscape is siloed across competing platforms, each creating its own walled garden. Amazon, eBay, and specialized marketplaces for luxury goods may have digitized commerce, but they’ve simply replaced physical barriers with digital ones. These platforms deliberately maintain high costs and barriers designed to prevent users from migrating to competitors. Algorithms deployed by these platforms are trained explicitly to maximize revenue by adjusting prices dynamically…

Brazil’s top financial policy body banned some pension funds from investing in cryptocurrencies because they are too risky.The National Monetary Council (CMN) forbade closed pension entities known as Entidades Fechadas de Previdência Complementar (EFPCs) from allocating any portion of their guarantee reserves into bitcoin (BTC) or other digital currencies. The EFPCs manage retirement savings for tens of thousands of unionized and company-employed workers and their reserves are typically made up of bonds and equities.“The resolution also prohibits investments in virtual assets, considering their specific investment characteristics and associated risk,” a Ministry of Finance notice circulating among local news outlets reads.The…

Still a big fan of digital assets, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink nevertheless said he’s not blind to the possible risks to the U.S. from Bitcoin’s (BTC) rise to prominence.“The U.S. has benefited from the dollar serving as the world’s reserve currency for decades,” said Fink in his annual letter to shareholders.But that’s not guaranteed to last forever … If the U.S. doesn’t get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like Bitcoin.””I’m obviously not anti-digital assets,” Fink continued.” But two things can be true at the same time: Decentralized finance is…

X2Y2, once a leading marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFT) will shut on April 30, ending a three-year run that saw the exchange briefly trail only OpenSea in trading volume during the NFT boom of 2021.The decision comes as the broader NFT market continues to deflate. Trading volumes have dropped nearly 90% since their peak, the team wrote in a post, and X2Y2 struggled to maintain the network effects critical to marketplace success.“Marketplaces live or die by network effects,” founder TP wrote in a post. “After three years, it’s clear it’s time to move on.” X2Y2 started up in early 2022…

You’ve probably heard this at a dinner party: “If only we had bought Bitcoin ten years ago.” Now imagine that conversation echoing in the corridors of a central bank, where the stakes are a nation missing one of the most asymmetric financial opportunities of the century.For emerging economies — countries like India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, Nigeria, Thailand, or Vietnam — strategic exposure to cryptocurrencies is essential for future economic resilience. They collectively represent over 40% of the global population and approximately 25% of global GDP, yet they remain vulnerable to external economic shocks, including currency fluctuations, trade disruptions, and…

In all likelihood, the move by the Sei Foundation – the organization behind layer1 blockchain Sei – to buy bankrupt genetic data company 23andMe is a long-shot at best, and potentially just a publicity stunt. But, it remains an incredibly exciting idea that has got a lot of people thinking.Were such a deal to go through, we would see a Web3 company rescue a Web2 company, which would have enormous ramifications in and of itself. Web2 tech giants are already being challenged in the area of AI by much smaller, nimble, and more flexible companies. However, the purchase of what…

The first quarter of 2025 tells a clear story about DeFi’s evolution. While yields across major lending platforms have compressed significantly, innovation at the market’s edges demonstrates DeFi’s continued maturation and growth.The Great Yield CompressionDeFi yields have declined sharply across all major lending platforms:The vaults.fyi USD benchmark has fallen below 3.1%, below the U.S. 1-month T-bill yield of ~4.3% for the first time since late 2023. This benchmark, a weighted average across four leading markets, approached 14% in late 2024.Spark has implemented four consecutive rate decreases in 2025 alone. Starting the year at 12.5%, rates were cut to 8.75%, then…

Bitcoin’s correction may just be getting started. In fact, the crypto sector as a whole could be facing a severe downtrend reminiscent of 2022.“I could see us going back to a five handle by the end of the year,” Quinn Thompson, founder of crypto hedge fund Lekker Capital, told CoinDesk in an interview. A “five handle,” i.e. a price between $50,000 and $59,999, would be down substantially from the already shaky current $83,000 level and roughly a 50% decline from bitcoin’s peak just above $109,000 just more than two months ago.“I don’t think it happens quickly, which is why it…

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) withdrew two pieces of crypto-related staff guidance on Friday, further streamlining its approach to crypto regulation.The first advisory rescinded on Friday was Staff Advisory No. 18-14, Advisory with Respect to Virtual Currency Derivative Product Listings. Originally published in May 2018, the advisory established guidelines for crypto-related derivatives, including requiring reporting firms to maintain “close coordination with [the] CFTC surveillance group” and establishing a large trader reporting threshold of five bitcoins (or the equivalent value for other cryptocurrencies), among other suggestions. On Friday, the CFTC published a letter saying that “additional staff experience” and…

Circle Internet Financial, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, has reportedly hired investment banks JPMorgan Chase and Citi as the underwriters of a hoped-for IPO, Fortune reported.While timing is not yet totally decided, sources say Circle will publicly file its prospectus in late April, meaning a potential IPO perhaps prior to June.The company had previously filed confidential paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in January 2024.Circle in 2021 had attempted to go public via a SPAC merger in 2021, but that attempt was derailed first by an intransigent SEC and then by the crypto collapse of 2022.…