Author: Coindesk

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 3536.7, up 3.8% (+130.21) since 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday.18 of 20 assets are trading higher.Leaders: RENDER (+7.8%) and SOL (+7.5%).Laggards: HBAR (-0.5%) and XLM (-0.3%).The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally. Read the full article here

The T3 Financial Crime Unit, a collaboration between the Tron blockchain, stablecoin issuer Tether and blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs, said it has frozen a total of 100 million of Tether’s USDT used by illicit actors since the unit was formed in September.The venture analyzed millions of transactions spanning five continents, monitoring a total volume in excess of 3 billion USDT, the largest stablecoin, T3 said in a statement.T3 involves TRM Labs using its blockchain intelligence and monitoring tools to help Tron and Tether identify and freeze USDT linked to illicit activities. There’s nearly $60 billion in USDT issued on…

Infrastructure providers, such as Northern Data (NB2), are well positioned to benefit from the growing demand from artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) firms, broker Canaccord Genuity said in a report Thursday initiating coverage of the stock.Canaccord assumed coverage of the shares with a buy rating and a 60 euro ($62) price target. The stock was trading 2.4% higher at 45.65 euros at publication time.Companies like Northern Data are “building the railroad for the AI gold rush,” analysts led by Kingsley Crane said. The company’s Taiga Cloud business has come online at the “forefront of what is shaping up…

KuCoin has introduced a feature for merchants to allow customers to pay for purchases directly from their account on the crypto exchange.Merchants can integrate the tool, called KuCoin Pay, into their payment systems. Customers pay by scanning a QR code or using the KuCoin app, the exchange said in a press release.The exchange joins a number of crypto payment providers in facilitating direct payments for customers, a feature that’s supposed to bridge the gap between crypto and the legacy payments infrastructure.In August, for example, digital payments platform Flexa announced a similar product with retailers including Chipotle, Mikimoto, Regal Cinemas and…

Tether’s USDT, the world’s leading dollar-pegged stablecoin, has experienced the sharpest weekly decline in market value in two years, spurring market volatility concerns.USDT’s market cap slid more than 1% to $137.24 billion this week, the most significant decline since the crash of the FTX exchange in the second week of November 2022, data from TradingView show. It hit a record $140.72 billion in mid-December. The decline follows a decision by several European Union (EU)-based exchanges and Coinbase (COIN) to remove USDT due to compliance issues with the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulations that took full effect on Dec. 30,…

Crypto majors zoomed higher in the past 24 hours as the market entered a widely expected bullish year, with bitcoin (BTC) inching above $95,000 to shake off losses from last week.A CoinDesk analysis from Tuesday flagged unusually high trading volumes for XRP stemming from South Korean exchanges, which has historically acted as a harbinger for price volatility with a bias to the upside.XRP surged 11% to lead growth among majors as of Thursday, led by $1.3 billion worth of trading volumes on Korea-focused exchange UpBit.Among other majors, Cardano’s ADA, Solana’s SOL and Chainlink’s LINK added as much as 8%. Ether…

Traders are no longer chasing upside in Nasdaq-listed MicroStrategy (MSTR), a leveraged play on bitcoin (BTC), signaling a cautious shift in market sentiment.MSTR’s 250-day put-call skew, which shows the difference in implied volatility between puts (options to sell) and calls (options to buy), has bounced to zero from -20% in three weeks, according to a data tracking website Market Chameleon.It means that call options, which traders use to achieve asymmetric upside gains from a potential rally in the underlying asset, are now trading at parity with puts that offer downside protection rather than the unusually high premium observed three weeks…

Spanish banking giant Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) is deepening its foray into the crypto ecosystem.Garanti BBVA Kripto, a crypto custody platform operated by Garanti BBVA — Turkey’s fifth largest bank, which as of December 2023 was almost 86% owned by BBVA — will soon be providing crypto trading services to the general public. Bit2Me, a crypto exchange founded in Spain in 2014, will be used as the bank’s trading execution center.And now that the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation is in full effect across the European Union, the partnership between BBVA and the crypto exchange is a strong signal…

This special edition of the Protocol looks back at 2024’s groundbreaking developments and forward to what the coming year might bring for blockchain technology.Let’s dive into the milestones, trends, and predictions shaping the next era of crypto.This article is featured in the latest issue of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday.1. A Look Back: Top Crypto Tech Milestones of 2024Ethereum’s Duncun Upgrade: 2024 marked Ethereum’s most significant network upgrade yet. Ethereum activated the Cancun-Deneb (Dencun) upgrade, a landmark improvement designed…

Centralized data networks, ones that are owned and/or managed by a single entity, have been structurally broken for years. Why? Single points of failure. If one entity (or even a few) has access to a database, then there is only one “point” to compromise in order to gain full access. This is a serious problem for networks holding sensitive data like customer information, government files, and financial records, and those with control of infrastructure like power grids.Billions of digital records were stolen in 2024 alone, causing an estimated $10 trillion in damages! Notable breaches include nearly all of AT&T’s customer…