Author: Coindesk

The first version of the network, built on the Arbitrum Nitro tech stack, will start in June to test cross-chain settlements in a publicly transparent manner. The full-fledged Gravity Mainnet with native staking and restaking aims to go live in the second quarter of 2025. The reason for creating Gravity, said the Galaxe team, is that the platform’s user base has significantly grown over the past three years, now counting 20 million users and 100 million monthly transactions. This required a more efficient and scalable solution to manage cross-chain interactions between 34 blockchains that Galxe supports. Read the full article…

McHenry, who has been wrangling the crypto legislation in the House, argued that the outcome is assured by the massive level of bipartisan backing last week for his Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21) – with more than a third of House Democrats showing up to vote yes, despite pushback from the White House. He said the momentum will carry into the next congressional session in 2025, if it has to, and will lift the market-structure bill and the long-awaited legislation to regulate stablecoin issuers. Read the full article here

“What we’re trying to achieve is the freedom to innovate,” Lubin said on stage. “We have been doing our best to thread the needle between offering access to applications and needing to be a regulated financial institution. We’re pretty sure we got it right and continue to get it right,” which is why the SEC’s recent, call it interest, in Ethereum is so worrying. Read the full article here

“The fact that you’ve seen $58 billion or so come to the ETFs has been a strong sign that the market is looking for regulation in traditional structures,” Martin said. “So, hopefully, the [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] saw the inflows and said, ‘Hey, this makes a lot of sense,’ considering bitcoin ETFs have been a tremendous success.” Read the full article here

“Consensus this year compared to last year felt like night and day,” said Wick. “The maturation was evident in the conversations, the speakers, the sponsors and the intentional inclusion of groups that are working to make the industry more diverse,” she added, noting the outreach done this year to include diversity groups like LGBTQ+ advocates at Web Q. “The industry’s best chance at sustaining a bull run is through maturation and increased integrity, and Consensus this year clearly reflects a positive move in that direction,” she concluded. Read the full article here

ETH ETF IMPLICATIONS – The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved key regulatory filings for proposed exchange traded funds (ETFs) linked to the price of the Ethereum blockchain’s native cryptocurrency, ether (ETH) – after months of speculation that regulators would likely deny the instruments. While most Ethereum supporters likely applauded the step, since the ETH token’s price rallied, the developer shop Consensys couldn’t resist the opportunity to tweet that “this seemingly last-minute approval is yet another example of the SEC’s troublesome ad hoc approach to digital assets.” Consensys, which is suing the agency, argued that the approval might mean Ethereum…

AUSTIN, TX — Goldman Sachs, the 150-year-old investment bank, is getting deeper into crypto, according to the firm’s global head of digital assets, Mathew McDermott. The executive, a 19-year veteran of the bank, helped found its digital asset desk in 2021 and has since led efforts to introduce a suite of products and services including liquidity in cash-settled derivatives, options and futures crypto trading. Read the full article here

In late February of this year, two Binance employees were detained by Nigerian officials without notice or a public announcement of charges. In the weeks that followed, Nigerian prosecutors charged the two with money laundering and tax offenses that are entirely divorced from the personal conduct of either man. One of those Binance employees, Tigran Gambaryan, was, in fact, the company’s lead law enforcement liaison – a former IRS criminal investigator and global educator on the use of blockchain technology for identifying and combatting precisely the kind of offenses that he is now unjustly facing in a Nigerian court. Read…

To that end, Lovelace is paying multiple Dimon impersonators to wrestle anthropomorphized versions of meme coins and be paraded around Consensus by a dominatrix. The whole series of stunts is estimated to cost Agent Lovelace, as he prefers to be called, $25,000, including budget for labor, costumes and smoke bombs. Read the full article here

“I think altcoins have been lagging the recent run-up in ethereum and for most traders look at what ETH is doing and imply potential moves for altcoins,” Sischka said. “The ETF apporval drove the ETH rally but I think with doge the wild card is that Elon Musk adds it to Twitter as some sort of payment currency.” Read the full article here