Author: Coindesk

What was shaping up to be another down day in markets has reversed in Tuesday afternoon U.S. trading after Ukraine agreed to a Trump administration proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in its war with Russia.Russia has yet to weigh in, but the agreement will hinge on that country’s acceptance, according to a joint statement of Ukraine and the U.S. after a meeting of their delegations in Saudi Arabia.As part of the agreement, the U.S. will immediately lift a pause on intelligence sharing and military assistance to Ukraine, the statement continued.Trade tensions ease as wellHelping the mood, Ontario Premier Doug Ford…

Crypto payments firm Mesh announced on Tuesday it has raised $82 million to expand its stablecoin-based payments settlement network globally.The series B round was led by Paradigm, with ConsenSys, QuantumLight, Yolo Investments, Evolution VC, Hike Ventures, Opportuna and AltaIR Capital participating.Most of the capital raise was settled in PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin, according to the press release.Mesh develops a payments network on blockchain rails, connecting crypto wallets with exchanges payment service providers for merchants. With Mesh, users can pay with crypto assets such as bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and Solana’s SOL, while merchants settle the payment in stablecoins of their choice…

ATME, a digital assets exchange licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB), said on Tuesday it has completed its first tokenized real-world asset (RWA) issuance starting with gold-backed tokens.The tokens, available to accredited investors, each represent one kilogram of gold stored in custody, according to the press release. Investors can trade these digital assets on ATME’s secondary market or redeem them for physical gold. The initiative aims to modernize gold ownership by eliminating storage and transportation concerns while leveraging blockchain for efficiency and security.Read more: Tokenization Allows More Efficient Collateral Transfers, Digital Asset, Euroclear and World Gold Council Found…

Paraguayan agencies are ready to integrate the crypto sector. All that’s missing is the legislation.That’s according to Juan Carlos Reyes, the president of the Comisión Nacional de Activos Digitales (CNAD), the agency in charge of regulating cryptocurrencies in El Salvador.“From my perspective, Paraguay seems to have the groundwork laid for supervision, regulation, and taxation regimes. It feels like they’re just waiting for politicians to approve or propose a formal law to move things forward,” Reyes told CoinDesk.On Friday Reyes signed a crypto regulatory agreement with Liliana Elizabeth Alcaraz Recalde, head of Paraguay’s Secretaría de Prevención de Lavado de Dinero o…

“Is it safe?” For any crypto investors with any cash remaining, that’s the key question following the collapse in prices.10X Research’s Markus Thielen had been correctly bearish headed into this latest downturn and he’s not yet ready to buy the dip.Like the speculative bubble in DeFI/NFTs that collapsed following the 2021 bull market (dealing a blow to ETH from which it still has not recovered), there’s been a similar collapse in memecoins this time around, which has punished not just Solana’s (SOL), but a number of associated tokens.”This structural decline indicates a weakening foundation, making now a time forcaution —…

A Bitcoin ordinals project said it aims to raise over $34 million from an art collection of Microsoft Paint-style cartoon wizards following a similar sale last year that raised $13 million.Taproot Wizards plans to auction 2,121 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of its signature “magic internet JPEGs,” which harken back to a 2013 bitcoin meme: “magic internet money,” later this month, according to an emailed statement. The Wizards were inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain two years ago and are now being made available for sale. The project last year sold a collection of 3,000 “Quantum Cats” to raise support for the Bitcoin…

Bitwise Invest has launched the Bitwise Bitcoin Standard Corporations ETF (OWNB), an exchange-traded fund designed to track publicly traded companies that hold at least 1,000 bitcoin (BTC).The index follows specific rules: companies must hold a minimum of 1,000 BTC, with holdings weighted based on the amount of bitcoin owned. The largest holding is capped at 20%, while companies with less than 33% of their assets in bitcoin are weighted at 1.5%. The index rebalances every quarter. According to Bitwise, publicly traded companies collectively held 591,817 BTC as of the end of 2024. The ETF, which will trade on NYSE Arca,…

Circle has launched on Tuesday the upgraded version of its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP V2), a tool that facilitates USDC transfers across blockchains. The company said that the upgrade significantly cuts down transaction times to seconds from the typical 13-19 minutes on Ethereum and its Layer 2 networks.CCTP, introduced in 2023, is designed to move digital assets across blockchains without relying on traditional liquidity pools and third-party liquidity providers. Since its debut, the protocol has handled over $36 billion in transaction volume, according to Circle.The upgraded version offers a Fast Transfer feature, which enables near-instant transfers between supported networks, the…

The recent crypto market downturn has caused the once-popular $120,000 bitcoin (BTC) options bet to lose its crown to the $100,000 bet in a sign that traders are reassessing their bullish expectations.At press time, the $100,000 call was the most popular BTC options contract on the exchange, boasting a notional open interest of $1.55 billion. The notional open interest represents the dollar value of the number of active option contracts at a given time.Meanwhile, the $120,000 call, the former leader up until last month, stood at the number two position, with a notional open interest of $1.33 billion.A call gives…

Bitcoin’s (BTC) price on CME futures dropped to a low of around $76,700 on Monday, officially filling the CME futures gap that was created on Nov. 5, when President Trump won the U.S. election.At the end of February, bitcoin (BTC) briefly fell to approximately $78,500, partially filling the gap, as the lowest point of the gap was $77,400. However, since CME futures only dropped to around $78,500 at that time, the gap remained partially open. With Monday’s decline to $76,700, the gap—ranging from $77,930 to $80,600—has now been fully closed.For context, CME bitcoin futures trade 23 hours a day, from…