Author: Coindesk
Alex Mashinsky, the founder and one-time CEO of bankrupt crypto lending platform Celsius Network, pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud on Tuesday afternoon, according to reports from Reuters and Inner City Press.He has reportedly agreed to a maximum sentencing guideline of 360 months, or 30 years, in prison.Last July, Mashinsky was arrested in New York and charged with seven criminal counts tied to the operation of and the 2022 collapse of his company, including securities fraud, commodities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy to manipulate the price of Celsius’ native token, CEL.“I said that Celsius had approval from regulators. It…
Osmosis, a decentralized exchange (DEX) built for the Cosmos blockchain ecosystem, has opened a bridge to the Bitcoin network, as part of a pivot toward the world’s largest cryptocurrency.The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that governs Osmosis voted in favor of adopting Bitcoin bridge Nomic in June. The integration went live on Tuesday. Nomic’s bridge now enables users to deposit their BTC on the Bitcoin network in return for a token called alloyed BTC (allBTC) on Osmosis. “In leveraging Nomic’s decentralized custody engine and offering zero-fee transactions, Osmosis is becoming a decentralized Bitcoin exchange,” a spokesperson told CoinDesk in a Telegram…
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 3764.72, down 2.6% (-100.09) since 4 pm ET on Monday.Nine of 13 assets are trading higher.Leaders: HBAR (+11.0%) and POL (+9.8%).Laggards: XRP (-9.9%) and LTC (-6.1%).The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally. Read the full article here
A lot of stars would need to align for Paul Atkins, reportedly president-elect Donald Trump’s top candidate to chair the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, to take the job.It is an unattractive role for him because of the amount of work needed to turn around the bloated agency he believes was mismanaged by outgoing SEC chair Gary Gensler, a person familiar with Atkins’ thinking said.Reluctance to clean up Gensler’s “mess” has been shared by former Commodity Futures Trading Commission chair Chris Giancarlo, who has advocated for Atkins to take the SEC job and was once considered a candidate himself.Atkins, a…
The analyst who co-wrote this piece owns shares of MicroStrategy (MSTR).Despite all the weird memecoins and degen behavior in 2024, ETFs are in the running for story of the year in cryptocurrency investing.And that story — which began when bitcoin and ether exchange-traded funds debuted to great fanfare — might not be over. After a sixfold surge in its stock price this year, Michael Saylor’s bitcoin (BTC) investment firm MicroStrategy (MSTR) looks poised to join one of the biggest exchange-traded funds around, the $312 billion Invesco QQQ ETF (QQQ).That fund tracks the Nasdaq-100 Index. Every December, Nasdaq shakes up the…
Whales made a splash on the South Korean exchange Upbit, swooping in with significant amounts of Tether’s USDT stablecoin to snap up coins at discounted prices after the declaration of martial law led to a flash crash in bitcoin (BTC) and other token prices.The large traders transferred over $163 million in USDT to Upbit within an hour of President Yoon Suuk Yeol declaring emergency martial law, according to data tracked by blockchain sleuth Lookonchain. The president accused the opposition of siding with North Korea and undermining the nation’s constitutional order. USDT, the world’s leading dollar-pegged stablecoin, is commonly used for…
Nuclear energy is back in fashion, and a new blockchain-based marketplace aims to hop on the trend bringing investment access in the yellow ore to retail investors in a tokenized form.London-based Tezos ecosystem development firm Trilitech launched Uranium.io on Tuesday to offer tokens backed by physical uranium oxide U3O8, also known as “yellowcake.”The app was built on Etherlink, an EVM-compatible layer-2 network on top of Tezos (XTZ). The project recruited U.K.-regulated digital asset firm Archax as custodian for the underlying assets and creating the tokens. The physical metal is stored and maintained in a regulated depository at Cameco, one of…
Major crypto tokens quickly plunged as much as 30% against the Korean won on South Korean exchanges as the government declared emergency martial law late on Tuesday.South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared “emergency martial law,” accusing opposition parties of undermining the government, sympathizing with North Korea, and paralyzing the nation’s legislative process.Negative sentiment spilled over to the crypto markets in the minutes following. Bitcoin, XRP — two of the most traded tokens by volumes on local exchanges — plunged as low as 30% on Upbit before quickly recovering. BTC fell from $96,000 to $63,000 in U.S. dollar terms, assuming…
Human beings are emotional, and that’s especially so in crypto markets. Round numbers are idolized much more than in traditional finance, and investors and traders are susceptible to panic-selling if price gains stall near a number with several zeros at the end. At the same time, some traders look to front-run the exodus, stacking order books such that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.Take, for example, bitcoin (BTC), which has again drawn up short at the so-called psychological $100,000 sell wall. While earlier analysis has pointed at profit-taking, capitulation from short-term holders and just not enough demand to take bitcoin higher,…
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)It’s literally raining BTC options! OK, not literally, but just two weeks after call and put contracts for BlackRock’s spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) began trading, we now have Cboe cash-settled FLEX options on both the Cboe Bitcoin U.S. ETF Index and the Cboe Mini Bitcoin U.S. ETF Index.These options debuted without much fanfare on Monday and have opened up a new “defined outcome” market, according to Jeff Park, the head of alpha strategies at Bitwise. Park says they allow for the customization of over-the-counter strategies while completely cutting out counterparty risk.…