Author: Coindesk

OKX chief legal officer Mauricio Beugelmans has left the cryptocurrency exchange, according to his Linkedin profile.Beugelmans, who has been instrumental in shaping OKX’s global compliance policy, states on his profile that his tenure lasted three years and eight months at the exchange, from August 2021 to March 2025.Just last month, OKX paid over $500 million in penalties and forfeited fees in a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice which stated that the company had facilitated more than $5 billion in “suspicious transactions and criminal proceeds.”A source familiar with the matter said Beugelmans’ exit was related to the recent DoJ…

Japanese hotel firm Metaplanet (3350) has issued a 2 billion yen ($13.3 million) zero-coupon ordinary bond, with proceeds earmarked for additional bitcoin (BTC) purchases. The bond is scheduled to redeem on Sept. 30.In addition, Metaplanet has been added to the BetaShares Crypto Innovators ETF (CRYP), a fund with over $50 billion in assets under management, according to CEO Simon Gerovich. Metaplanet holds the largest weighting in the ETF at 15.5%, surpassing notable industry names such as Strategy (MSTR) and Coinbase (COIN), which take the second and third spots, respectively. The ETF is traded on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) and…

Australia-based bitcoin miner IREN is redirecting its growth plans away from BTC mining and towards its AI data centers and AI cloud services businesses.“As we near completion of our 50 EH/s mining expansion, our focus is shifting to the next phase of growth and delivering scalable infrastructure for AI and HPC,” said co-founder and CEO Daniel Roberts in a Monday business update.Once completed at 52 EH/s, the mining expansion is expected to generate $528 million in annual cash flow, according to the company. Current installed capacity is 35 EH/s and completion is expected in the coming months.IREN shares are lower…

Darknet markets are increasingly returning to bitcoin (BTC) as their primary cryptocurrency because of rising liquidity and accessibility challenges associated with privacy-focused coins like monero (XMR), according to Eric Jardine, cybercrime research lead at Chainalysis.”After major exchanges delisted XMR, we observed a significant increase in bitcoin inflows,” Jardine said in an interview with CoinDesk. “Reduced accessibility is steering users back toward bitcoin.”Many Western markets on the darknet — a part of the internet hosted within an encrypted network and accessible only through specialized anonymity-providing tools — had either fully moved to monero or operated with it in parallel with bitcoin…

CoinShares’ Valkyrie Bitcoin Mining (WGMI) exchange-traded fund (ETF) is the worst-performing ETF of 2025, down 43% year-to-date, according to Senior Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas. The ETF is made up of several publicly traded bitcoin (BTC) miners. IREN (IREN) is the largest holding at 15%, which is down 42%. Core Scientific (CORZ) follows with a 14% weighting and a 48% decline, while Cipher Mining (CIFR), the third-largest holding at 9.6%, is down 52%. Even NVIDIA (NVDA), the sixth-largest holding at 5%, has dropped over 20% this year.According to its investment strategy, “The ETF will invest in companies that derive at…

Ether (ETH) has dropped 39% this year relative to bitcoin (BTC), the largest cryptocurrency, taking the ratio between the two to the lowest in almost five years as a riskier macroeconomic environment weighs on the second-largest cryptocurrency.At the current level, 1 ETH is the equivalent of 0.02191 BTC. That’s the least since May 2020, when ether was trading around $200 and bitcoin just under $10,000. Today the ETH price is about $1,800 and the BTC price around $82,000.The underperformance is notable because it’s the first time ether has weakened against bitcoin in the 12 months after a BTC reward halving.…

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,…

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,…

Bitcoin traders just over $81,500 in Asian morning hours Monday as a weekend slide saw major tokens lose momentum on last week’s brief rally.XRP and Cardano’s ADA led losses among majors with a 5% drop in the past 24 hours, with Solana’s SOL, dogecoin (DOGE) and ether (ETH) down between 2-3%. Stock markets opened lower Monday, their fourth consecutive day of decline, as investors around the globe brace for President Donald Trump’s upcoming announcement of new tariffs, set to be revealed on April 2, amid growing fears of a global trade war’s economic fallout.Futures for U.S. and European stock indexes…

Bitcoin is making its way from trading desks to corporate treasuries, and by the end of the decade, it could be standard practice, according to one analyst.“Across all the different strategies and implementations, I anticipate that by 2030, a quarter of the S&P 500 will have BTC somewhere on their balance sheets as a long-term asset,” Elliot Chun, a partner at Architect Partners, wrote in a market snapshot.The strategy—holding bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset—was unorthodox when Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, first adopted it in August 2020. The firm framed BTC as a hedge against inflation, a diversification tool,…