Tether and Gold.com are exploring options to allow the use of Tether’s stablecoins to purchase physical gold. The investment arm of stablecoin issuer Tether has acquired a $150 million stake in the precious metals platform Gold.com to expand access to tokenized gold. Tether said on Thursday that it acquired an approximately 12% stake in the company, which will integrate Tether Gold (XAUt), its gold-backed cryptocurrency, into Gold.com’s platform. Gold.com is a publicly listed online marketplace that sells gold and other precious metals, such as silver and platinum, to several markets, including the US. Read more
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says banks and crypto may begin to offer similar products, and pledged to prevent deposit flight concerns that are stalling a key crypto bill. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has told Congress that traditional and crypto banking products and services may be more intertwined in the future. Appearing before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, Bessent was asked by Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis whether there could come a time when conventional banks and crypto are offering the same types of products. “I think that can happen over time,” Bessent said. “We’ve actually been working with small and community banks to discuss how they can be part of the digital asset revolution.” Read more
Crypto mining stocks have declined across the board the value of the entire crypto market fell almost 9% on Thursday. Shares in crypto mining companies IREN and CleanSpark sank on Thursday as their earnings came in below Wall Street expectations and Bitcoin’s slide saw traders turn risk-off. Bitcoin (BTC) has fallen 12% over the past 24 hours to briefly touch a low of $60,000 early on Friday. Meanwhile, the crypto market capitalization fell by almost 9%, according to CoinMarketCap. CleanSpark (CLSK) led the decline, closing trading on Thursday down 19.13% and falling another 8.6% after-hours to $7.55 after its results for the quarter ended Dec. 31 came in below analyst predictions. Read more