Tether accounted for almost 2% of global gold demand last quarter, with Jefferies noting that its aggressive buying may be influencing short-term market sentiment. Stablecoin issuer Tether holds 116 tons of physical gold, placing it on par with central banks such as those in South Korea, Hungary and Greece. Tether is “the largest holder of gold outside central banks,” Jefferies wrote in a recent analysis, per a report by the Financial Times. The investment bank added that Tether’s growing appetite for gold may be playing a larger role in the metal’s recent surge than previously assumed. According to Jefferies, Tether’s gold purchases last quarter accounted for nearly 2% of total global gold demand and almost 12% of central bank purchases. The company said that Tether’s aggressive accumulation over the past two months “is likely to have tightened supply in the short term and influenced sentiment,” potentially driving speculative inflows into gold markets. Read more
Eunice will trial standardized crypto disclosure templates with major exchanges, feeding real-world data into the UK’s evolving 2026 rulebook. The United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) approved regulatory technology (RegTech) company Eunice to run experiments in its sandbox, which offers one of the clearest indications yet of how the country intends to build its forthcoming crypto rulebook. On Wednesday, the FCA announced that Eunice will test a set of standardized crypto disclosure templates with major exchanges, including Coinbase, Crypto.com and Kraken. The company will test whether the templates improve transparency when used in real-world settings. The FCA also highlighted that its regulatory sandbox is still accepting applications from companies looking to test their ideas. “We encourage any firm to apply who are looking to test a similar solution to help inform our regulatory approach to cryptoassets,” said Colin Payne, the head of innovation at the FCA. Read more
The Trump family-backed WLFI purchased nearly $8 million worth of tokens, aiming to mitigate the downtrend of the token by artificially reducing the outstanding supply. The Trump family-backed crypto project, World Liberty Financial, continued its token buyback strategy, aiming to create more demand for the token, which has declined almost 50% since its launch. The platform acquired $7.7 million worth of World Liberty Financial (WLFI) tokens on Wednesday at an average price of $0.16 per token, according to blockchain data platform Lookonchain. The nearly $8 million buy is significantly larger than its $1.06 million WLFI token buyback on Sept. 27, which saw $1.43 million worth of tokens burned, Cointelegraph reported at the time. Read more
Bubblemaps shared blockchain data indicating that team-related wallets had purchased 30% of the token supply, but Edel’s co-founder said the acquisition was part of its token rollout plans. Concerns are mounting over unusual activity surrounding the token launch of Edel Finance, a lending protocol focused on tokenized stocks and real-world assets (RWAs). Blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps claimed in a Tuesday X post that a cluster of about 160 wallets accumulated 30% of the EDEL token supply, worth $11 million, during the launch earlier this month. The platform alleged the wallets were linked and funded in a coordinated fashion immediately before trading opened. “Edel Finance sniped 30% of $EDEL. Then tried to hide it behind a maze of wallets and liquidity positions," said Bubblemaps. “Just hours before $EDEL launched, ~60 wallets were funded from Binance [...] Together, they got 30% of the supply – now worth $11M.” Read more
Naver Financial plans to acquire Dunamu in a $10.3 billion stock-swap deal, issuing 87.56 million new shares and making the crypto giant a wholly owned subsidiary. Naver Financial, the fintech arm of South Korean tech conglomerate Naver, announced plans to acquire Upbit operator Dunamu in a stock-swap deal valued at about 15.1 trillion won ($10.3 billion). According to a Wednesday filing, Naver Financial will issue 87.56 million new shares to Dunamu shareholders. The transaction will make Dunamu a wholly owned subsidiary of Naver Financial. The exchange ratio was set using an external discounted cash-flow valuation, which put the corporate value ratio at 1:3.064569 and, after adjusting for each firm’s outstanding shares, produced a final exchange price ratio of 1:2.5422618. Read more
The Bank for International Settlements is advancing major digital currency pilots, testing cross-border CBDCs, tokenized deposits and real-time payment rails. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has appointed Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli, one of the world’s most influential economists on digital money, as the next head of the BIS Innovation Hub, effective March 2026. The BIS said Tuesday that Mancini-Griffoli will “lead work to explore technological solutions within the central bank community on innovation.” His mandate is expected to include ongoing work on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), tokenized assets and new forms of market infrastructure. Mancini-Griffoli currently serves as the assistant director in the International Monetary Fund’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department, where he leads work on payments and currencies. He’s one of the IMF’s most prominent voices advocating for regulated and publicly backed digital money models and has previously warned about the risks of unregulated sta...
A Bitcoin bull flag on the price charts projected a rebound to $96,000 as the Puell Multiple indicator suggested that BTC is undervalued at current prices. Bitcoin (BTC) is due for a “new uptrend” as a key BTC price metric suggests that the recent drop to $80,000 provided a prime buying opportunity. Key takeaways: Bitcoin’s Puell Multiple has entered the discount zone, suggesting undervalued market conditions. Read more