Stablecoins are carving out specialized roles as regulation reshapes the market, while Strategy’s Bitcoin sale and Vanguard’s tokenization push highlight crypto’s evolving financial landscape. Crypto’s infrastructure is starting to look a lot more like traditional finance. New data from Dune shows that the world’s stablecoin leaders — Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC — are no longer competing for the same users, with each now dominating a different corner of the market. Meanwhile, demand for MiCA-compliant euro stablecoins is accelerating, hinting that the stablecoin economy is slowly expanding beyond the US dollar. Elsewhere in Crypto Biz, Strategy reignited debate over its “never sell” philosophy after offloading more than $200 million in Bitcoin (BTC) to fund shareholder dividends, while Vanguard signaled that even Wall Street’s biggest crypto skeptics are embracing tokenization. USDT has become crypto’s dominant payments stablecoin while USDC has cemented itself as DeFi’s preferred settlement asset, accord...
Bitcoin price gains came thanks to US whales propeling the Coinbase Premium above a key trend line, new analysis from CryptoQuant reported. Bitcoin (BTC) demand shifts are “behind” the price rebound to $64,000, new analysis claims. Key points: Read more
The Fed named a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen to co-lead an AI productivity and jobs task force under Chair Kevin Warsh’s policy review. The US Federal Reserve named Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) co-founder Marc Andreessen to help lead a task force studying how artificial intelligence and other new technologies could affect productivity and jobs. Andreessen will serve on the Fed’s Productivity and Jobs task force alongside Charles I. Jones, a Stanford University economics professor currently on leave at Anthropic, and Asha Sharma, Microsoft's executive vice president and Xbox CEO. The new task force will assess how general-purpose technologies such as AI will affect employment and productivity to better inform the central bank's policymaking, the Fed said in a Thursday press release. Read more
A MiCA license allows crypto firms to operate in the EU, but the ESMA’s review will test whether custodians can meet the required security and resilience standards. Getting licensed under the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework is only the beginning for crypto custodians, as regulators turn their attention from authorization to operational resilience. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) on Wednesday launched a Common Supervisory Action (CSA) to examine the operational resilience of crypto asset service providers (CASPs), placing custody services at the center of the review. “The signal is quite clear: for custodians, a licence is the start line, not the finish,” Sebastien Dessimoz, co-founder and managing partner at digital asset infrastructure firm Taurus, told Cointelegraph. Read more
As the CLARITY Act advances, crypto's growing political influence in Washington is under scrutiny. But the crypto lobby's massive campaign spend is only part of the story. The crypto industry has spent years convincing Washington that it deserves a seat at the table. Now, as Congress inches toward passing the CLARITY Act, a long-awaited crypto market structure bill, it seems it finally has one. The question is no longer whether lawmakers are listening to digital asset advocates, but whether the crypto lobby’s deep pockets and influence in election campaigns will be enough to get the legislation over the line. That debate comes as Senate negotiators work toward a potential floor vote before Congress breaks for its August recess. Read more
US prosecutors charged Rossen Iossifov over the alleged laundering of $290,000 in forfeited crypto from a Kraken account. United States prosecutors have charged a man serving a federal prison sentence over the alleged removal and laundering of about $290,000 in crypto assets held in a Kraken account subject to a forfeiture order. The Department of Justice said on Thursday that Rossen Iossifov, a Bulgarian national, conspired in January 2024 to withdraw and transfer crypto that a federal court had ordered forfeited following his 2021 conviction. Prosecutors allege that the assets were moved through illicit mixing services and crypto exchanges before the US could take possession. The case shows how attempts to move crypto after a forfeiture order can trigger fresh criminal charges, even after the underlying conviction. Read more