Author: Coindesk

Early traders of NFT marketplace Magic Eden’s new token ME had a lot to be thankful for – if they could access their airdrops, that is.In the first minutes of trading Tuesday, the token’s fully diluted valuation hit $15 billion. But as more claimants managed to process their airdrops – and in some lucky cases, sell – that valuation began to crater. It eventually settled at an FDV around $5 billion.ME’s rocky rollout stood in sharp contrast to other recent token launches. Hyperliquid’s HYPE token immediately went parabolic after launching in late November. And Move’s days-old MOVE token had a…

El Salvador and Argentina are partnering to help develop the crypto industry in Latin America.Juan Carlos Reyes, El Salvador’s top crypto regulator and president of the Comisión Nacional de Activos Digitales (CNAD), and Roberto Silva, the president of the Comisión Nacional de Valores of Argentina (CNV), on Tuesday signed an agreement for the two countries to collaborate on crypto regulation.“At CNAD we have two core objectives, when it comes to international collaboration,” Reyes told CoinDesk in an email. “To share our expertise with international partners, enabling them to harness the benefits of a well-regulated industry. … [And] to broaden the…

A deputy in the Russian parliament proposed the creation of a strategic bitcoin (BTC) reserve to tackle sanctions imposed on the country, state-owned news agency Ria reported on Monday.Anton Tkachev of the New People party, which formed in 2020 and has 16 out of the 450 seats in the State Duma, asked Finance Minister Anton Siluanov to “assess the feasibility of creating a strategic bitcoin reserve in Russia by analogy with state reserve in traditional currencies.”The reserve would help counter the threat posed to Russian financial stability by sanctions, inflation and the volatility of traditional currencies that the country holds,…

Microsoft (MSFT) doesn’t appear to be adding its name anytime soon to the list of corporate entities holding bitcoin (BTC) after its shareholders voted against a proposal that would have directed the board of directors to study such a move.Titled “Assessment of Investing in Bitcoin,” the proposal was put forward by the National Center for Public Policy Research. The think tank group suggested that Microsoft should consider diversifying 1% of its total assets into bitcoin as a potential hedge against inflation. According to the latest data by Bloomberg, Microsoft holds $78.4 billion of cash and marketable securities on its balance…

Tether’s stablecoin USD₮ has been recognized as an accepted virtual asset in the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), the company announced on Tuesday.The approval from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority means that companies which are licensed can offer pre-approved USD₮ services in Abu Dhabi’s Global Market. Though, the release did not say what those approved services might be. CoinDesk reached out to Tether for comment.Tether ‘s USD₮ exceeded a $138 billion market cap but the company wants to continue advancing its growth, the statement said.“By bringing USD₮ to the forefront of ADGM’s regulated virtual asset framework, we are not only…

Cryptocurrencies continued to this week’s decline on Tuesday, with altcoins in near-freefall as bitcoin (BTC) slid further from the $100,000 level.Among the worst-hit cryptos were XRP, Polkadot (DOT), Litecoin (LTC), Aptos (APT) and Cardano (ADA), down 15%-18% over the past 24 hours, extending Monday declines. The CoinDesk 20 — an index of the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, excluding memecoins, stablecoins and exchange coins — tumbled almost 10% Most cryptos in the index plunged by double-digit percentage amount at the minimum, though Ethereum’s ether (ETH) and Solana’s SOL fell just 8% and 9%, respectively.Bitcoin, in comparison, held up relatively…

For decades, prediction markets were a backwater, a science experiment.In 2024, Shayne Coplan, founder of Polymarket, turned them into a multibillion-dollar business and a popular barometer of the political winds, cited by everyone from <a href=”https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/111620840453593688″ target=”_blank”>Donald</a> <a href=”https://x.com/Polymarket/status/1847410169048703358″ target=”_blank”>Trump</a> to <a href=”https://x.com/shayne_coplan/status/1833127734844789106″ target=”_blank”>CNN</a>.In so doing, he demonstrated a real-world consumer use case for cryptocurrency – and, some argue, a new model for news media at a time when <a href=”https://news.gallup.com/poll/651977/americans-trust-media-remains-trend-low.aspx” target=”_blank”>the public has lost trust</a> in traditional sources of information.”Most people I know were checking Polymarket for odds during the election,” said Meltem Demirors, a crypto O.G. and early…

There are many in the Web3 space who have only recently jumped into AI. Illia Polosukhin isn’t one of them. Long before he co-founded the decentralized app blockchain protocol NEAR, Polosukhin worked at Google as an AI researcher and co-wrote the seminal 2017 paper “Attention is All you Need,” which is widely credited as pioneering the “transformer” technology that powers popular large language model (LLMs) AI apps such as ChatGPT. His AI credentials are impeccable.“AI is a really powerful force,” Polosukhin told me in 2023, “but what we don’t want is it to be controlled and biased by a single…

<a href=”https://www.coindesk.com/indices/” target=”_blank”>CoinDesk Indices</a> presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the <a href=”https://www.coindesk.com/indices/cd20/” target=”_blank”>CoinDesk 20 Index</a>.The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 3581.03, down 3.5% (-128.43) since 4 pm ET on Monday.One of 20 assets is trading higher.Leaders: BTC (+1.0%) and LINK (-1.3%). Laggards: BCH (-10.0%) and APT (-9.9%).The <a href=”https://www.coindesk.com/indices/cd20/” target=”_blank”>CoinDesk 20</a> is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally. Read the full article here

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)Bitcoin’s bull-bear tug-of-war continues to rage, with prices recovering to over $97,000 from Monday’s dip to $94,200. The slide was prompted by concern Google’s new quantum-computing chip, Willow, could compromise BTC’s security — a worry quickly dismissed by analysts.That leaves directional traders with little to do other than wait for the dust to settle before picking a side, as prices remain locked in Thursday’s indecisive trading range. But there’s a silver lining! The turbulence has crowded out those undisciplined, overleveraged altcoin traders, as is evident from perpetual funding rates. Altcoin rates have…