Author: Coindesk

A thawing in the trade stance from both the U.S. and China has sent risk assets higher in the hours since the U.S. stock market closed on Wednesday.”The current tariffs and trade barriers are unsustainable, but we don’t want to decouple,” said U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, disclosing plans to travel to Switzerland to meet with Chinese counterparts for trade talks this coming weekend.”Senior U.S. officials have made a series of remarks hinting at adjustments to tariffs and have expressed, through various channels, a desire to engage with the Chinese side on tariff-related issues,” said a China Ministry of Commerce…

President Donald Trump’s personal involvement in crypto has inspired a vigorous Democratic response in the Senate, including a new bill from Senator Chris Murphy to ban presidents and their families from dabbling in memecoins or issuing other financial assets.As the Connecticut lawmaker was introducing the Modern Emoluments and Malfeasance Enforcement (MEME) Act overnight, fellow Democrat Elizabeth Warren was fresh from a Senate floor speech on Monday evening in which she outlined what would get senators from her party to return to the table on stablecoin legislation. In just a few short days, Democrats have mounted a resistance to the U.S.…

It is often said that crypto is part technology and part religion. As such, it is hardly surprising that the unfolding regulatory overhaul has been accompanied both by vigorous soul searching related to the state of crypto’s (often anti-establishment) core values and palpable excitement over potential new use cases.With the blessing of CoinDesk, I asked the panelists of our upcoming people’s regulatory roundtable at Consensus 2025—each of them crypto veterans and advocates for sensible regulation—about safeguarding crypto values in regulatory reform and about the innovation that new regulation is making possible. You can catch Kayvan Sadeghi, Connor Spelliscy, Lewis Cohen,…

The leading Senate Democrat on a panel tasked with investigating corruption and mismanagement is scrutinizing U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent crypto activities and whether they’re part of a “pay-to-play scheme to provide access to the Presidency to the highest bidder.”Richard Blumenthal, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations — a panel housed within the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs — wrote letters to Bill Zanker of Fight Fight Fight LLC and Zach Witkoff, a co-founder of World Liberty Financial on Tuesday, asking them a series of questions about the ownership and investment structure for Trump-affiliated…

Bitcoin (BTC) tightened its grip on the crypto market on Tuesday, with dominance surging to fresh four-year high as crypto traders rotated into the market’s anchor asset ahead of tomorrow’s key Federal Reserve policy meeting.BTC held steady around the $94,000-$95,000 area, up a modest 0.4% over the past 24 hours and extending a tight-range trading pattern that has persisted since the weekend. Meanwhile, the broad-market CoinDesk 20 Index slipped 0.7% lower, with Ethereum’s ether (ETH), and native tokens of Sui (SUI), Aptos (APT) and Polygon (POL) dragging the benchmark lower.CoinDesk 20 Index performance (CoinDesk Indices) A check on traditional markets…

Investment bank Compass Point downgraded MARA Holdings (MARA) to a sell rating from neutral on Tuesday, citing unsustainable cash burn. “There’s better ways to get BTC beta,” analysts wrote in the research note, pointing to Marathon’s hash price, now below 5.5 cents, as a signal of declining profitability. At current operational levels, Compass Point estimates the company is facing significant cash burn that could lead to shareholder dilution.The bank also slashed MARA’s price target to $9.50 from $25, suggesting more than 25% downside from the current price near $13.Marathon’s business relies on bitcoin mining, a process that earns BTC in…

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives derailed what was supposed to be a joint hearing on crypto policy efforts on Tuesday, insisting that President Donald Trump’s personal crypto dealings were too urgent to allow other discussion on instituting industry regulations.”I object to this joint hearing because of the corruption of the president of the United States and his ownership of crypto and his oversight of all the agencies,” said Maxine Waters, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, effectively robbing the gathering of its official status that required unanimous consent to proceed with the panel’s joint hearing…

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has dropped its appeal in its case against Kalshi, a New York-based prediction market, according to a Monday court filing, finally clearing the way for the platform to offer political event contracts.Under the conditions of the motion for voluntary dismissal, which is still subject to court approval, both parties will pay their own legal costs and Kalshi waives any right to sue the CFTC for the litigation.”Today is historic. We have always believed that doing things the right way, no matter how hard, no matter how painful, pays off. This result is proof…

New Hampshire has become the first state to allow the investment of its public funds into crypto assets with its governor signing the new law on Tuesday.The state beat a number of others to the punch this year as what had started as a surge in state lawmaker momentum had run into roadblocks over recent weeks. As the first to authorize its treasurer to set up such a reserve, New Hampshire could very well beat the U.S. government in forming a stockpile, too.”New Hampshire is once again first in the Nation,” New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte, a Republican who’s in…

Eight decades of dollar history can be read as a three-act play.Act I was the Eurodollar—off-shore bank deposits that sprang up in 1950s London so the Soviet bloc, European exporters, and eventually every multinational could hold dollars outside U.S. regulation, spawning a multi-trillion-dollar shadow banking base.Act II was the Petrodollar. After 1974, OPEC’s decision to price crude in dollars hard-wired global energy demand to U.S. currency and gave Washington an automatic bid for its Treasury bills.John deVadoss will appear in the “IEEE x Consensus Research Symposium: What’s next in Agentic AI?” at Consensus 2025 on May 16 at 11:00am-12:30pm.Act III…