Author: Coindesk

The scrutiny comes after a French national, known only by his first name, Theo, profited handsomely on Polymarket by placing large, and ultimately correct, bets that Donald Trump would win the U.S. presidential election, despite polls that indicated the contest with Kamala Harris would be a toss-up. According to the Wall Street Journal, Theo is set to make $50 million on his trades. Read the full article here

In March 2022, the Fed started raising interest rates due to the economic distortions it saw. We looked at the same aberrations above in labor, inflation, and economic output. However, now, all those measures have returned back to normal. Yet, monetary policy has not. So, like I said at the start, don’t be surprised when policymakers cut rates later this week and even more moving forward. And as this happens, it should support more stability in economic growth and underpin a steady rally in crypto investments like bitcoin and ether. Read the full article here

Like other layer-2 Ethereum rollups, Eclipse lets people transact on Ethereum with faster speeds and lower fees. To accomplish this, it operates as its own network, written using the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) — the fast and cheap execution architecture spearheaded by Ethereum’s biggest competitor, Solana. Similar to other layer 2s, Eclipse bundles up transactions from its users and periodically passes them down to the base Ethereum chain, where they’re cemented permanently to the chain’s ledger. Read the full article here

Solv Protocol, a Bitcoin staking platform, has introduced a classification system for the underlying assets of its SolvBTC reserve, dividing them into Core Reserve (native BTC, Binance-backed BTCB) and Innovative Reserve (wrapped assets like WBTC, cbBTC), according to the team: “This setup enhances stability and risk management through minting caps and cross-chain rate limits on the Innovative Reserve. Now one of the largest multichain BTC liquid staking token issuers, Solv spans 10+ networks, including Ethereum and BNB Chain, with over 24,000 BTC ($2 billion) in reserves, offering secure, yield-generating opportunities in DeFi.” Read the full article here

The SEC sued Kraken in November 2023 for operating a platform as an unregistered securities exchange, broker, dealer and clearing agency. The SEC said it believes that since at least September 2018, Kraken had made hundreds of millions of dollars unlawfully by facilitating the buying and selling of crypto asset securities. Kraken filed for the case to be dismissed, a motion that was rejected in August. Read the full article here

Although Trump didn’t provide a specific reason as to why he thinks Ulbricht should be freed, many view Ulbricht’s double-life sentence without parole as excessive for a non-violent offense related to creating Silk Road, which demonstrated Bitcoin’s potential as a decentralized, censorship-resistant system. Read the full article here

CoinShares noted that Trump has been a critic of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Gary Gensler, its chairman, particularly in regard to the agency’s approach to crypto. His administration is expected to appoint new SEC leaders, which could lead to a period of more crypto-friendly regulation. Read the full article here

“Analyzing the BTC to gold ratio, we can see that the downtrend [indicative of gold’s outperformance since March] is starting to reverse. Globally, investors will increasingly focus on hedging against currency debasement and capitalizing on the Trump market play, both of which favor BTC,” Noelle Acheson, author of the Crypto Is Macro Now newsletter said. Read the full article here

“It’s hard to think how the election outcome could have landed better for the industry, and expectations of key regulatory improvements are likely to build in the coming months and quarters,” David Lawant, head of research at crypto prime brokerage FalconX, said in a Wednesday report. “Such clarity could open room for additional crypto ETF products, covering the main crypto assets and potentially also a broader crypto index, and give entrepreneurs and investors more comfort in U.S. token launches.” However, Lawant warned of short-term risks in the meanwhile, which may include “last-minute enforcement actions by departing officials.” Read the full…

The result? It has been Lekker’s most successful trade since the fund was launched six months ago, Thompson told CoinDesk. He declined to give exact numbers. SOL has surged 13% in the last 24 hours and isn’t far from multi-year highs. AI-related bitcoin miners such as Core Scientific (CORZ), Hut 8 (HUT) and HIVE (HIVE) are up roughly 10% Wednesday, while BTC is soaring 8.7% and hit a new all-time high of $75,600. Read the full article here