Author: Coindesk

Prediction markets are usually structured as yes/no bets on a given outcome; each share pays out $1 (in cryptocurrency, in Polymarket’s case) if the bet proves correct, and zero if not. The price of a share, expressed in cents on the dollar, indicates the market’s assessment, when translated into percentage terms, of the prediction coming true. Read the full article here

Solana’ SOL topped $240 for the first time in three years as bitcoin (BTC) took a breather above $90,000. SOL advanced 4.3% in the past 24 hours, outperforming the broad-market benchmark CoinDesk 20 Index’s 1.6% gain. Bitcoin, meanwhile, pulled back slightly to just above $90,000 before U.S. trading hours as investors digested the monster rally to records since Donald Trump’s election victory. Still, the largest crypto’s pause may be only temporary: BTC may potentially climb as high as $200,000, according to BCA Research analysis of fractal patterns. Read the full article here

Since establishing the Frequency blockchain, Project Liberty has recruited 1.3 million users. SOAR’s Family and Citizens will bring tens of millions more in the future, as people look for alternatives to existing all-powerful social media platforms, said Tomicah Tillemann, Project Liberty’s president. As well as bringing decentralization it’s a chance “to do AI right,” he said. Read the full article here

As BTC rose past the $93,000 mark last week and inflows into the U.S.-listed spot ETFs and crypto stocks surged, JPMorgan’s retail sentiment score rose to a record high of 4. The measure is designed to gauge the sentiment of retail investors toward cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin, based on the activity in the family of BTC products, including spot ETFs. Read the full article here

“Despite bitcoin’s election-fueled rally, its 260-day complexity is not yet close to the 1.2 level that would signal the start of another crypto winter,” the BCA Research team led by Chief Strategist Dhaval Joshi said in a Nov. 14 note to clients. “Hence, while we should expect a near-term retracement, bitcoin’s structural uptrend is intact with an ultimate destination of $200,000+.” Read the full article here

“There’s a gap in the stablecoin market here in Europe, and we see that as an opportunity,” Arnoud Star Busmann, CEO of the firm’s payments-focused subsidiary Quantoz Payments, said in an interview with CoinDesk. “We are confident that our tech and regulatory compliance put us in a good position to fill that gap, especially now that we have strong partners like Kraken and Tether.” Read the full article here

Metaplanet started buying BTC in April this year as a hedge against Japan’s debt issues and volatility in the yen. Since then, it has accumulated 1,018 BTC worth $92.33 million, according to data source Bitcoin Treasuries. The company has also used options strategies to boost its holdings. Read the full article here

In December 2020, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple Labs, accusing the company of conducting an unregistered securities offering by selling XRP, which the SEC classified as a security. In July of last year, a U.S. court ruled that Ripple’s XRP sales to institutional investors qualified as securities transactions. However, it also determined that sales of XRP on public exchanges did not fall under the definition of a security. In October, the SEC appealed against this ruling, seeking further clarification on the legal status of XRP. Read the full article here

Donald Trump and the Republican Party at large had a strong 2024 election, winning the presidency, Senate and House. This almost certainly guarantees crypto legislation will advance and become law sometime in the next two years. It also heralds a potentially softer approach from regulators toward the sector. Read the full article here

Other top-tier banks/wealth management operations, including Morgan Stanley, Cantor Fitzgerald, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of America, UBS and HSBC, didn’t add to or subtract much from their positions. A new entrant was Australian investment bank Macquarie Group, which purchased 132,355 shares of IBIT worth $4.8 million. Wells Fargo, which has a very minor stake in the ETFs, held most of its shares in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust (BTC). Read the full article here