Author: Coindesk

Bitcoin traded either side of $63,000 during the European morning on Friday having retreated from its rebound to $64,400 late Thursday. BTC looks set to end the week in an upward trend having recovered from its collapse south of $57,000 last week. At the time of writing, bitcoin is priced just under $63,000, 3.1% higher in the last 24 hours. The CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), measuring the broader digital asset market, is up 3.6%. Solana led the gains among the CD20 constituents, climbing over 9% to $154, while DOGE is up just over 4.5% at $0.15, testament to the meme-coin…

In the past 24 hours, TON, the native cryptocurrency of the layer project The Open Network, has risen 17.5% and decentralized GPU-based rendering solution Render Network’s RNDR token has gained 13.2%, according to data source Coingecko. Both are among the best-performing coins of the past 24 hours. Bitcoin, the market leader, has rallied 6% to $63,000. Read the full article here

The fast-growing organization of cryptocurrency supporters, Stand With Crypto, is getting into campaign financing with the opening of its own political action committee (PAC) that will make direct donations to endorsed congressional candidates, said Chief Strategist Nick Carr. Its opening slate of endorsements will feature five candidates seeking open seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, though the money will have to wait. Stand With Crypto’s effort is an “associated PAC,” meaning it’s supported by the nonprofit group’s own members, and each of them will be limited to $5,000 contributions. Once they start adding cash to the PAC…

The two have been registered with the country’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU-IND), the most senior official of the unit, which falls under the nation’s Finance Ministry, told CoinDesk. They were among more than 9 offshore entities banned – others included Huobi, Kraken, Gate.io, Bittrex, Bitstamp, MEXC Global and Bitfinex – at the end of last year. Read the full article here

The results of this effort would, of course, have no legal weight in Russia and would not end Putin’s presidency per se, but the referendum could, in theory, give a public relations boost to efforts to oust him. And it gives Russians a way to voice criticism in a nation where the consequences of dissent can be high; opposition leader Alexei Navalny recently died while jailed in an Arctic penal colony. Read the full article here

“The SEC was created by Congress to enforce the Securities Act and Exchange Act, including the requirement that securities intermediaries register with the SEC,” the filing from April said. “In applying the Howey test in its determination that Kraken must register, the SEC is simply following its Congressional mandate.” Read the full article here

The popular trading platform received the notice – a preliminary warning from the regulator about potential enforcement action – on May 4, the company said in a filing on Monday. The notice should be viewed as a “continued attempt by the SEC to reinforce its position that all crypto tokens outside bitcoin and ether should be classified as securities,” analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote. Read the full article here

In January, Grayscale converted GBTC, which had been in existence as a closed-end fund for over a decade, into a spot ETF, becoming one of ten issuers to bring such a fund to the market. While billions flowed into the new vehicles, GBTC, whose management fee of 1.50% was more than 100 basis points above its competitors, experienced billions in outflows. Read the full article here

FINTRAC also said that, between June 1, 2021 and July 19, 2023 Binance failed to report 5,902 crypto transactions bigger than $10,000 and their attached know-your-customer (KYC) information to the regulator. The agency discovered the violations using blockchain explorer tools. Read the full article here

The concept for the new protocol was created in conjunction with researchers from Berkeley and Columbia University, according to the team. It combines math, computer science and economics, deploying “advanced sampling methods and game theory to incentivize integrity and minimize computational demands across decentralized networks,” Hyperbolic shared in a press release with CoinDesk. Read the full article here