Author: Coindesk

President-elect Donald Trump named Patomak Global Partners founder and CEO Paul Atkins as his pick to head up the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.Atkins, who co-chairs the Digital Chamber’s Token Alliance and is an adviser to Reserve, previously served as a commissioner at the agency under former President George W. Bush between 2002 and 2008. The former regulator visited Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida resort, earlier this week but was initially reluctant to take on the role, CoinDesk reported Tuesday.In his announcement, Trump called Atkins a “proven leader.” “He believes in the promise of robust, innovative capital markets that are…

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Marc Hochstein, CoinDesk’s deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.In this issue:Bitcoin gets a DEX, thanks to the Nomic bridgeUnion Labs gets $12M to build more bridgesBase’s Jesse Pollak looks back on BALDJustin Drake discusses Ethereum’s Beam Chain plan … and SolanaNetwork NewsSTRENGTH FOR ETH: The Ethereum blockchain’s transaction revenue has increased substantially since Donald Trump’s U.S. election victory, Steno Research said in a Monday report. “This outcome is crucial for all on-chain activity,” wrote analyst Mads Eberhardt. The surge has led to…

Mike Collins, a first-term Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, may not have a high profile on crypto policy, but he has a very active crypto portfolio. And his trading indicates that memecoin enthusiasm has reached the shores of Congress.Collins, whose committee assignments keep him far from the core decisions on U.S. crypto legislation, has kept a busy hand in the buying and selling of digital assets. Earlier this week, Collins made small buys of Ski Mask Dog and Aerodrome (AERO) – each of the purchases categorized in the congressional financial filings as between $1,000 and $15,000.A trucking company…

As the cryptocurrency market matures, driven by growing institutional, corporate, and possibly governmental adoption, the role of the crypto options market is becoming increasingly crucial. This segment helps investors deploy tailored strategies for hedging, leverage, and yield generation while providing deeper insights into market sentiment.Crypto options markets are primarily divided into centralized exchanges and the over-the-counter (OTC) market. Recent open interest data from platforms like Deribit, CME and OKX reveals that total listed bitcoin options reached new heights in late November, surpassing USD 40 billion.However, ether options remain relatively underwhelming, with open interest totalling just USD 9.8 billion, down from…

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said nobody has the power to ban bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies and that they will continue to develop, news agency RIA reported.“Who can ban bitcoin? Nobody,” Putin said at an investment conference in Moscow on Wednesday. “And who can prohibit the use of other electronic means of payment? Nobody. Because these are new technologies and no matter what happens to the dollar, these tools will develop one way or another because everyone will strive to reduce costs and increase reliability,” he said.Just last week, Putin signed a law classifying digital currencies as a form of property…

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 3892.21, up 1.3% (+48.1) since 4 pm ET on Tuesday.Fifteen of 20 assets are trading higher.Leaders: DOT (+17.3%) and FIL (+16.3%).Laggards: HBAR (-5.3%) and LTC (-2.7%).The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally. Read the full article here

It has been almost exactly a year since Javier Milei became the 59th President of Argentina.Inaugurated on December 10, 2023, the flamboyant libertarian economist — a former goalkeeper who cloned his dogs and called central banks “the worst garbage that exists on this Earth” — had vowed to end the South American nation’s hyperinflation crisis and to drastically reduce government spending.Since then, Argentina’s monthly inflation rate has fallen from 25.5% in December 2023 to 2.7% last October. The government has registered a fiscal surplus for nine months in a row, a substantial achievement considering it’s been running deficits since 2008.…

Shaurya MalwaShaurya is the Co-Leader of the CoinDesk tokens and data team in Asia with a focus on crypto derivatives, DeFi, market microstructure, and protocol analysis. Shaurya holds over $1,000 in BTC, ETH, SOL, AVAX, SUSHI, CRV, NEAR, YFI, YFII, SHIB, DOGE, USDT, USDC, BNB, MANA, MLN, LINK, XMR, ALGO, VET, CAKE, AAVE, COMP, ROOK, TRX, SNX, RUNE, FTM, ZIL, KSM, ENJ, CKB, JOE, GHST, PERP, BTRFLY, OHM, BANANA, ROME, BURGER, SPIRIT, and ORCA. He provides over $1,000 to liquidity pools on Compound, Curve, SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, BurgerSwap, Orca, AnySwap, SpiritSwap, Rook Protocol, Yearn Finance, Synthetix, Harvest, Redacted Cartel, OlympusDAO, Rome,…

Financial conditions in the U.S. are the loosest they have been in three years, according to the Chicago Fed’s National Conditions Index (NFCI), a weekly gauge that takes into account factors such as leverage, debt and equity markets and traditional banking.The readings provide insight into three specific areas: risk, credit and leverage. For the week ended Nov. 22, the index dropped to -0.64, a level not seen since August 2021 in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.A negative reading suggests financial conditions are looser than average indicating that liquidity is readily available. A positive reading, in contrast, means tighter-than-average conditions…

Tron’s TRX catapulted to a record high early Wednesday, nearly 7 years after its initial release, on no immediate catalysts in a move that liquidated over $21 million in short bets.TRX jumped 76% to over $0.4, reaching a $34 billion market capitalization, with trading volumes exploding from $2 billion on Monday to over $16 billion in the past 24 hours.Tron ecosystem tokens and memes surged 35% on average, with some gaining as much as 100%, following TRX’s move, data shows. Value locked on Tron-based protocols zoomed to $14 billion as part of the price surge, DeFiLlama data shows.While no immediate…