Author: Coindesk

Tether, the crypto company behind the largest stablecoin USDT, said it would rank as the seventh largest net buyer of U.S. Treasury securities in 2024 among countries.The firm purchased a net $33.1 billion worth of U.S. Treasury securities last year, according to a compilation posted on Thursday by CEO Paolo Ardonio using data from Tether’s reserve reports and the U.S. Treasury Department.That puts the stablecoin issuer above countries like Canada, Mexico and Germany in the ranking, while Japan and China were net sellers by significantly reducing their U.S. Treasury holdings.U.S. Treasury securities purchases by Tether and foreign countries (Tether) The…

Bitcoin miners are facing renewed financial pressure as declining transaction fees and a hashprice drop push operational costs higher, according to TheMinerMag’s February 2025 report​.Bitcoin’s hashrate climbed 3.8% in February to 810 EH/s, showing a slowdown in mining competition growth. However, the hashprice (the revenue that miners earn per unit of computing power) slipped to $45/PH/s, wiping out gains from the U.S. election-driven price surge. At this level, inefficient miners are feeling the strain.Transaction fees made up just 1.3% of total block rewards in February, marking their lowest share since the last bear market bottom in 2022. March is trending…

Stock and other traditional financial asset traders across the world are wanting to be able to buy and sell assets around the clock, resulting in two of the biggest stock markets in the U.S., Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) making moves to offer round-the-clock trading soon.Продолжение Читайте Ниже“We definitely see that this is where the markets are moving,” said Giang Bui, Nasdaq’s head of U.S. Equities & Exchange-Traded Products, speaking at the Digital Asset Summit in New York on Thursday. “There’s a lot of demand globally for U.S. stocks and people want to trade within the hours…

The Walrus protocol, a blockchain-based data storage platform, said it raised $140 million in a private sale of its native token, WAL, led by Standard Crypto.The mainnet of the protocol, originally developed by Mysten Labs and built on layer-1 blockchain Sui, will debut on March 27, the Walrus Foundation said Thursday.Walrus plans to capitalize on the growing market for storing large amounts of data, driven in particular by the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the last couple of years.”By leveraging Sui’s unique architecture, we’re making storing data programmable, interactive, and secure,” Walrus Foundation managing executive Rebecca Simmonds said…

Bitcoin developers looking to expand the blockchain’s decentralized finance (DeFi) capabilities are likely to be considering zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, functionality that’s not currently available and which require a so-called soft fork, or new version of the software, to introduce them.That’s a problem, according Edan Yago, a Bitcoin veteran of over a decade and core contributor to smart contract operating system BitcoinOS (BOS).”Forking a blockchain, especially one with $2 trillion worth of value on it, is like open-heart surgery,” Yago told CoinDesk in an interview “Hard forks are obviously much more problematic, but I think introducing any kind of fork is…

Toncoin (TON), the native token of the Telegram-adjacent TON blockchain, spiked on Thursday as ecosystem organization The Open Network Foundation said several venture capital firms invested $400 million in the token.Investors include Sequoia Capital, Ribbit, Benchmark and Kingsway, according to a press release shared with CoinDesk. Vy Capital, Draper Associates and Libertus Capital, CoinFund, Hypersphere, SkyBridge, and Karatage also participated in the round.”These venture capital firms hold over $400 million worth of Toncoin, which is the native cryptocurrency of the TON Blockchain.It’s important to note that this is not a fundraising round. Instead, these VCs are placing their bets on…

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 2712.19, down 1.0% (-26.22) since 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday.Three of 20 assets are trading higher.Leaders: BCH (+1.0%) and LINK (+0.6%).Laggards: AVAX (-4.5%) and DOT (-3.7%).The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally. Read the full article here

Spot ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the U.S. posted their 11th straight day of net outflows, losing some $358.1 million of investor funds as the price of ether fell almost 7%.On Tuesday, BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA) saw $12.9 million of outflows, losing a net $137.6 million over the period. Fidelity’s FETH and Grayscale’s ETHE were the other top two contributors to the total outflow.In total, spot ether ETFs now hold around $7 billion worth of the cryptocurrency and, despite the outflows, seen a cumulative net inflow of $2.45 billion since their inception in July, SoSoValue data shows.The…

Alex Dolesky thought his startup’s push to “financialize” the sleepy uranium spot market would be a hit as nuclear energy stages a global comeback. All that tokenized yellowcake’s looking more like gold.Months after netting its first $1.7 million from venture investors, Uranium Digital raised another $6.1 million in a seed round led by Framework Ventures.The financing will accelerate Uranium Digital’s buildout of a spot trading platform for uranium that uses crypto infrastructure on the backend. It claims to be the first institutional market — crypto-powered or not — for a critical clean-energy commodity that, perplexingly, doesn’t enjoy the same easy…

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)Bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and the broader crypto market are facing renewed pressure, reversing some of gains made after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell downplayed concerns about tariff-driven inflation .President Donald Trump is reportedly scheduled to speak at Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit in New York later, with traders keen to hear how the administration plans to acquire BTC in a budget-neutral manner. Don’t get too excited, the likelihood of such an announcement remains low.Trump is more likely to reiterate his aspiration to make America the “crypto capital of the world,” and even…