Crypto

Senate Democrats have threatened to block a funding bill if it includes money for the Department of Homeland Security, making traders fearful of another possible US government shutdown. Around $100 billion was wiped from the crypto market late on Sunday, as uncertainty around another potential partial US government shutdown caused traders to sell off. Senate Democrats threatened to block a funding package if it included money for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, after federal agents shot and killed a man in Minneapolis on Saturday. “Democrats sought common sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE. I will vote no,” said Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer. Read more

Prosecutors say the conspirators moved fentanyl analogues, MDMA, methylone, and ketamine, distributing bulk drugs and fake pills.

Winter storm Fern is currently sweeping across the United States and has already left 1 million residents without electrical power. The hashrate of Foundry USA, a digital asset advisory firm with the world’s largest Bitcoin (BTC) mining pool, has curtailed its hashrate by about 60% since Friday in response to the severe winter storm impacting large swaths of the United States. “Bitcoin hashrate on Foundry USA alone is down by nearly 200 exahashes per second (EH/s), or 60%, since Friday amid continued curtailment. Temporary block production has slowed down to 12 minutes,” according to TheMinerMag.  FoundryUSA still commands about 198 (EH/s) of hashing power, accounting for about 23% of the global mining pool hashrate, data from Hashrate Index shows.  Read more

The bitcoin treasury firm is using perpetual preferreds to retire convertibles, offering a potential framework for managing long-dated leverage.

GameStop just made a significant move with its Bitcoin holdings, Ethereum hones in on post-quantum security: Hodler’s Digest

Tokenized US Treasuries crossed $10 billion in total value this week, a milestone that confirms the category has moved from proof-of-concept to operational infrastructure. Yet, something happening underneath this achievement is just as important: Circle's USYC has edged past BlackRock's BUIDL as the largest tokenized Treasury product, signaling that distribution rails and collateral mechanics now […] The post How BlackRock just lost control of the $10B tokenized Treasury market to Circle for one simple, mechanical reason appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Telegram-based escrow markets evolved into pipelines for gambling, scams, and large-scale crypto laundering.

A new academic paper examines how autonomous AI agents could make influence campaigns harder to detect and more effective at scale.

Major changes to the Bitcoin protocol should be well-thought-out and rare, Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor previously said. The biggest threat to the Bitcoin network is “ambitious opportunists” who want to push through protocol changes, according to Michael Saylor, the co-founder of Bitcoin (BTC) treasury company Strategy. Saylor’s comments sparked a debate online. Bitcoin maximalist Justin Bechler said the comments were directed toward software developers pushing for non-monetary use cases on Bitcoin, such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and onchain images in blocks. “The greatest risk to Bitcoin is quantum,” investor Fred Krueger said, while others like Mert Mumtaz, the CEO of remote procedure call (RPC) node provider Helius, disagreed with Saylor. Mumtaz said: Read more

XRP's market cap is well behind BNB's now.

The Solana ecosystem has spent the past year doubling down on a financial infrastructure, Backpack CEO Armani Ferrante told CoinDesk.

Bitcoin began losing gains as US futures prepared to open as markets geared up to deal with a host of potential downside volatility catalysts. Bitcoin (BTC) saw multiday lows into Sunday’s weekly close as bulls faced a week of macro uncertainty. Key points: Bitcoin heads lower as market nerves about upcoming macroeconomic volatility catalysts boil over. Read more

Price stabilizes near recent lows after a volatile pullback from above $2.

Bitcoin and major tokens weakened Sunday as markets positioned ahead of the Federal Reserve’s next rate decision and a heavy slate of Magnificent Seven earnings.

The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, better known as the CLARITY Act, was supposed to draw clean lines around crypto assets and which regulator gets the first call. CryptoSlate has already walked readers through the bill’s larger architecture ahead of the January markup, including what changed, what stayed unresolved, and why jurisdiction and state preemption […] The post Will your crypto rewards survive upcoming CLARITY law? A plain-English guide to Section 404 appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Powell could signal a "dovish pause," but his comments on other issues may temper the bullish reaction in BTC and other risk assets.

Ethereum treasury firm SharpLink Gaming hopes to stand apart from the pack by focusing on the long-term—with shareholders top of mind.

Aurelion has shifted to Tether Gold (XAUT), a blockchain-based token backed by physical gold, to address potential market vulnerabilities in the "paper gold" market.

The Tallinn protocol upgrade marks Tezos' 20th major update since launching in 2018, and was implemented without a network fork. Tezos, a layer-1 proof-of-stake blockchain network, implemented its latest protocol upgrade, Tallinn, on Saturday, which reduced block times on the base layer to 6 seconds. The latest upgrade is the 20th update to the protocol, which reduces block times, slashes storage costs and reduces latency, resulting in faster network finality times, according to an announcement from Tezos. Tallinn also allows all network validators, known as “bakers”, to attest to every single block, rather than a subset of validators attesting to blocks, which is how validators verified blocks in previous versions of the protocol, Spokespeople for Tezos explained: Read more

Over $130M worth of leveraged positions were wiped out in the past 60 minutes alone.