Author: Coindesk

In today’s issue, DJ Windle from Windle Wealth looks at the risks advisors face when they can’t or won’t help clients who want exposure to digital assets.Then, Hong Sun from Core DAO talks about custody and DeFi in Ask an Expert.Thank you to our sponsor of this week’s newsletter, L1 Advisors.Happy reading.– Sarah MortonYou’re reading Crypto for Advisors, CoinDesk’s weekly newsletter that unpacks digital assets for financial advisors. Subscribe here to get it every Thursday.Houston, Advisors Have a ProblemFinancial advisors have largely ignored cryptocurrency for years, dismissing it as a speculative bubble or outright scam. Meanwhile, the financial landscape has…

Bitcoin (BTC) has slumped back to $95,000 after coming within a few hundred dollars of passing the symbolic $100,000 price level. But the largest cryptocurrency is only catching its breath before surging to newer heights, according to investment management firm ARK Invest.“We’re more or less anticipating $104,000 to $124,000 price targets by end of year,” David Puell, one of the firm’s research associates, told CoinDesk in an interview. “With the caveat that it’s not a recommendation, but so far, price action has kept up to that projection quite nicely.”Puell’s calculus is based on bitcoin’s seasonality — a term referring to…

Bitcoin’s (BTC) pullback from the $100,000 level after continuously hitting fresh new highs is only a temporary setback before eventually shooting past the barrier to even higher prices, crypto analytics firm CryptoQuant said.According to a Wednesday report shared with CoinDesk, multiple blockchain data metrics suggest that the largest crypto has more room to run before topping.CryptoQuant’s custom P&L index, which combines several on-chain valuation metrics to signal whether BTC is overvalued or undervalued, shows that the asset is firmly in a bull market but far from the overvalued levels it reached at the previous market peaks in 2021, 2017 and…

Costa Rica doesn’t have any formal crypto laws. But its government and institutions are quietly letting the sector flourish.That’s according to Jorge Eduardo Dengo Rosabal, a former deputy of Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly who participated in the drafting of a proposed — and rejected — crypto regulation bill for the Latin American nation back in 2022.“The best way to define the situation is that the government is carefully watching what is going on in the crypto world, but hasn’t gotten its hands fully into regulation yet, although there have been some discussions around it,” Dengo told CoinDesk in an interview.The…

The founders of web3 wallet Gifto minted 1.2 billion GFT tokens after Binance announced that it was delisting the asset on Tuesday. The surge in supply spurred a 55% plunge in GFT over the past two days.The newly-minted tokens were then sent to several exchanges leading to an increase in trading volume from $8.6 million on Tuesday to $66 million in the past 24-hours. Analysis by ZachXBT shows that the tokens were distributed to 19 wallets across seven exchanges.Due to the rapid increase in supply, the project’s market cap momentarily increased from $11 million to $20 million before tumbling back…

Cryptocurrency exchange XT.com has suffered a hack worth $1.7 million, according to blockchain security firm PeckShield.The stolen funds were converted to ether (ETH) and now sit in a newly created Ethereum wallet.”Today, XT detected an abnormal transfer from our platform wallet. Rest assured, this will not affect our users,” XT.com wrote on X. “We always maintain reserves 1.5x greater than user assets to ensure maximum security.”CoinGecko data shows that the Seychelles-based exchange has $47.7 million in reserves and reported trading volume of $3.3 billion in the past 24 hours.The hack marks the latest in a string of attacks targeting exchanges;…

Publicly traded bitcoin (BTC) miners are approaching the milestone of an aggregated $40 billion market cap, according to Farside data, doubling in seven months as bitcoin’s price rocketed through multiple record highs to approach six figures for the first time.Miners’ biggest challenge is revenue. The reward they receive for confirming blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain was cut 50% in April, when their combined market cap was about $20 billion. In this current epoch, only 450 bitcoin are mined a day and fees paid to miners remain at cycle lows, just 10 BTC ($946,000) on Nov. 27 according to Glassnode data.BTC…

There’s something about major psychological price levels, like bitcoin’s (BTC) $100,000 mark. As prices near these thresholds, anything tied to the asset gets an extra spark of energy.The Nasdaq-listed ProShares UltraShort Bitcoin ETF (SBIT) is a case in point, posting record trading volume of over 8 million shares on Nov. 13 as bitcoin topped $90,000 for the first time and strengthening the case for a rally into six figures by year-end, data tracked by TradingView show.Since then, BTC has held between $90,000 and $100,000, and the ETF’s daily trading volume has averaged just over 5 million shares. That’s significantly greater…

Decentralized exchange HyperLiquid announced the launch of HYPE, a native token that will be airdropped to early adopters on Friday.One billion tokens will be issued, with 31% going to users who earned points in a campaign that ended in May. A further 23.8% will be set aside for current and future core contributors, the latter of which will be locked for one year.HyperLiquid has more than 220,000 users and has racked up $2.4 billion in trading volume over the past 24 hours.Points campaigns have become increasingly common in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector this year as they incentivize the use…

Celsius will soon begin a second distribution of funds to creditors, according to a court filing on Nov. 27.A total of $127 million will be given out in bitcoin (BTC) or USD to creditors in five classes including retail borrower deposit claims, general earn claims, withhold claims, unsecured loan claims, and general unsecured claims.Each eligible creditor will receive 60.4% of the value of their claim as of the Petition Date.After emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January this year, the crypto company shut down its mobile and web apps on Feb. 29 and has begun the process of reimbursing creditors.…