Found 7217 news
BTC price faces pressure as markets brace for a sustained rise in long-term yields driven by economic deficits, particularly in Japan. The gap between the United States’ longer-dated and shorter-dated bonds has widened to its highest level since 2021, signaling potential trouble for Bitcoin (BTC) in 2026. Key takeaways: A wider gap means long-term yields are rising, which can pressure Bitcoin. Read more
Revolut is planning to apply for a US banking license through the OCC after previously considering a bank acquisition that could have required branch commitments. Crypto-friendly fintech unicorn Revolut plans to apply for a banking license in the United States, abandoning earlier plans to acquire a local lender as it seeks to expand its global presence, the Financial Times reported Friday. The United Kingdom-based fintech has been in discussions with US officials about applying for a bank license through the Office for the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the newspaper reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. The move, if confirmed, would be a milestone in strategy for Revolut, which said in September 2025 that it was exploring the purchase of a US bank to accelerate its global expansion. Read more
Restaking yields come from token emissions and VC incentives, not productive activity. Complex models concentrate power among large operators, while compounding risk cascades. Opinion by: Laura Wallendal, co-founder and CEO of Acre Restaking is often heralded as the next big thing in decentralized finance (DeFi) yields, but behind the hype lies a precarious balancing act. Validators are stacking responsibilities and slashing risks, incentives are misaligned, and much of the $21 billion in total value locked (TVL) is held by a handful of whales and venture capitalists rather than the broader market. Let’s break down why restaking lacks real product-market fit and how it compounds more risk than it yields. Most importantly, we need to confront the uncomfortable questions: Who profits when the system fails, and who is left holding the risk? Read more
Decentralized social network Farcaster remains operational after its acquisition by Neynar and confirmed plans to return $180 million in capital to investors. Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero moved to quell speculation about the project’s future, saying the protocol is not shutting down following its acquisition by infrastructure provider Neynar. Farcaster is a decentralized social networking protocol that allows developers to build interoperable social apps where users own their identities, social graphs and connections onchain rather than being locked into a single platform. In a post addressing the community, Romero said Farcaster remains operational and continues to see meaningful usage, citing its 250,000 active monthly users in December and more than 100,000 funded wallets. Read more
Bitcoin's profit cycle has turned negative for the first time since 2023, suggesting that BTC is transitioning into a bear market Bitcoin’s (BTC) drop below $90,000 has pushed onchain profitability metrics into the negative territory, signaling BTC’s entry into a bear market, new research revealed. Data from TradingView showed that Bitcoin price action had established a new range on lower time frames, and market observers were watching the key support levels below. Key takeaways: Read more
The proposal would fund the reserve with unclaimed crypto and staking rewards rather than direct state Bitcoin purchases. Lawmakers in the US state of Kansas are considering a bill that would create a state-managed Bitcoin and digital assets reserve fund funded through unclaimed property rather than direct purchases of cryptocurrency. Kansas Senate Bill 352, introduced by Senator Craig Bowser on Wednesday, would establish a “Bitcoin and digital assets reserve fund” in the state treasury, administered by the state treasurer. The fund would consist of airdrops, staking rewards and interest earned on abandoned digital assets held under Kansas’ unclaimed property law. Read more
Binance applied for a MiCA license in Greece shortly after France flagged the exchange as still unlicensed under MiCA ahead of June compliance deadlines. Binance submitted an application for authorization under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) in Greece as regulators warn of looming compliance deadlines. A Binance spokesperson confirmed to Cointelegraph on Friday that the exchange had filed for a MiCA license in Greece and was working with the country’s financial regulator, the Hellenic Capital Market Commission (HCMC). “We welcome the opportunity to work closely with the HCMC as this new regulation takes shape in the EU and look forward to contributing to the long-term growth of the EU’s digital financial ecosystem,” the exchange’s representative said. Read more
Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin details his 2026 “self-sovereign” tech stack, swapping Big Tech apps for encrypted, open-source and local privacy tools. Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin declared 2026 to be the “year we take back lost ground in computing self-sovereignty,” starting with his own devices. In a Friday post on X, he laid out the software changes he has made to reduce reliance on data-hungry, centralized platforms. The “two major changes” to the software he used in 2025 were switching “almost fully” to Fileverse, an open-source, decentralized document platform — a kind of privacy-preserving Google Docs — and switching “decisively” to Signal as his primary messaging app. Read more
The Financial Times reports that Ledger is planning a US IPO at a $4 billion valuation as hardware wallet demand increases amid crypto fraud and hacks. French crypto hardware wallet provider Ledger is planning an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States, which may value the company at more than $4 billion. Ledger is in talks with bankers at Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and Barclays about a potential US listing, the Financial Times reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. In November 2025, Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier said the company was planning fundraising or a listing in New York, noting that money for crypto was “certainly not in Europe.” Read more
Similar XRP funding conditions preceded rebounds of about 50% in August and September 2024 and about 100% in April 2025. XRP (XRP) funding rates on Binance have been mirroring the behavior seen ahead of sharp price rebounds since 2024. Key takeaways: Crowded XRP shorts (negative funding) have preceded rebounds. Read more
PricewaterhouseCoopers says that crypto is working in a “fragmented global ecosystem,” tackling different challenges in different markets. Crypto adoption is growing at different rates around the world, with some regions advancing much faster than others, says accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). “While crypto networks are borderless, adoption is not,” PwC said in its Global Crypto Regulation Report 2026. “Payments, remittances, savings, capital markets, and tokenization use cases are emerging unevenly across regions.” PwC said that crypto adoption still depends on economic conditions, financial inclusion, and existing financial infrastructure, leading to a “fragmented global ecosystem” where the technology solves “very different problems” across different markets. Read more
Bitcoin miners have powered down to ease the load on the grid in the past, such as in 2022, when Texas miners curtailed their activities amid a major winter storm. A winter storm threatening to pelt most of the southern US with ice and heavy snow this weekend could see Bitcoin miners curtail their operations until the front has passed. American weather forecasting company AccuWeather reported on Thursday that a “massive winter storm” could extend for 1,800 miles from far west Texas to the mid-Atlantic coast, cutting power, preventing travel in over a dozen states and affecting upwards of 60 million people. When large storms have caused havoc to power grids in the past, Bitcoin miners have powered down to ease the load on the grid. In 2022, when a major winter storm hit Texas, crypto miners across the state voluntarily curtailed their activities. Read more
The American Bankers Association’s fight over stablecoin yields has become its top priority as Congress looks to pass crypto market structure legislation before the midterms. The American Bankers Association (ABA) has made cracking down on stablecoin yield a top priority for 2026, amid its ongoing debate with US lawmakers that it will hurt the banking industry’s competitiveness. The ABA said on Tuesday that one of several priorities it has this year is to “stop payment stablecoins from becoming deposit substitutes that slash community bank lending by prohibiting paying interest, yield or rewards regardless of the platform.” Stablecoin oversight topped a list of five priorities, which also included fighting financial fraud, stopping arbitrary interest rate caps, and focusing on indexing and mission-driven banks. ABA CEO and president Rob Nichols said the priorities are guided by input from various banks and businesses of all sizes and models. Read more
The Justice Department will drop its case against Nathaniel Chastain, a former OpenSea manager who successfully appealed a wire fraud and money laundering conviction. US prosecutors will not retry their wire fraud and money laundering case against a former manager at the nonfungible token platform OpenSea, following a federal appeals court's July reversal of the convictions. On Wednesday, prosecutors told a Manhattan federal court that they entered into a one-month deferred prosecution agreement following the appeals court ruling, after which the case will be formally dismissed. In a letter, Manhattan US Attorney Jay Clayton, a former SEC chair, said the decision was made based on Chastain already serving parts of his initial sentence, including three months behind bars, and that he agreed not to contest the forfeiture of 15.98 Ether (ETH) worth $47,330 that that prosecutors alleged was obtained through the scheme. Read more
Some Bitcoiners are “highly skeptical” that quantum computing is to blame for Bitcoin’s sideways price action, while others argue it’s a major issue. Bitcoin backers have minimized claims that fears around quantum computing being a threat to the cryptocurrency sooner than expected are dragging on its price. Glassnode lead analyst James Check said in an X post on Thursday that linking Bitcoin’s price to quantum computing fears “is akin to blaming market manipulation for red candles, and declining exchange balances for green ones.” Check argued that while quantum computing may be “keeping some capital away” from Bitcoin (BTC), the weakness in Bitcoin’s price performance has been driven far more by heavy selling from long-term holders. Read more
Bitcoin derivatives markets show traders holding steady, but the path back to $95,000 relies on institutional inflows returning, especially after this week’s $1.58 billion outflow. Key takeaways: Bitcoin funding rates sit at 7%, showing bullish traders are still hesitant to increase leveraged positions. The spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $1.58 billion in outflows while gold hit record highs, signaling a shift toward safe assets. Read more
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire says AI agents have no alternative to stablecoins and will conduct everyday activities with the tokens within as little as three years. Within three to five years, billions of artificial intelligence agents that can work without human input will use crypto and stablecoins for everyday payments on behalf of users, says Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of stablecoin issuer Circle. “Three years, five years from now, one can reasonably expect that there will be billions, literally billions of AI agents conducting economic activity in the world on a continuous basis,” Allaire said on Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao shared a similar view on stage at the WEF on Thursday, saying the “native currency for AI agents is going to be crypto” and will do everything from buying tickets to paying restaurant bills. Read more
The filing with the US SEC seeks to eliminate contract caps on crypto ETF options, a change Nasdaq argues would address unequal treatment in derivatives markets. US exchange Nasdaq has filed a rule change with the Securities and Exchange Commission to remove limits on options tied to spot Bitcoin and Ether exchange-traded funds, in a move to align crypto ETF options with rules applied to other commodity-based funds. The proposal, filed on Jan. 7 and made effective on Wednesday, lifts the existing 25,000-contract limits on options linked to a range of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) ETFs listed on Nasdaq, including products from BlackRock, Fidelity, Bitwise, Grayscale, ARK/21Shares and VanEck, according to the filing. The SEC waived its standard 30-day waiting period, allowing the rule change to take effect immediately, while retaining the authority to suspend the change within 60 days if it determines further review is warranted. Read more
The lawsuit was filed days after the president threatened on social media to sue the banking giant for debanking him weeks after his supporters attacked the US Capitol in 2021. US President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit in Florida state court against JPMorgan, claiming that the banking giant terminated accounts connected to the president and his businesses “without warning or provocation.” According to a Thursday Bloomberg report, Trump filed a complaint in the Miami-Dade County state court, seeking $5 billion in damages from JPMorgan and its CEO, Jamie Dimon. The complaint was not available on the court’s public docket at the time of publication. The lawsuit accused JPMorgan of trade libel and breach of implied covenant of good faith, and Dimon of violating Florida’s deceptive trade practices law. A spokesperson for the bank said the lawsuit had no merit and JPMorgan “does not close accounts for political or religious reasons.” Read more
Institutional compliance costs and higher Treasury yields are reshaping stablecoin issuance as growth shifts from rapid expansion to balance-sheet discipline. After a period of rapid expansion, the global stablecoin market has largely stalled, signaling a consolidation phase as new regulation, liquidity constraints and higher real-world yields weigh on new issuance, according to Jimmy Xue, co-founder of quantitative yield protocol Axis. In a note shared with Cointelegraph, Xue said that while stablecoin regulation has advanced, tighter frameworks in the United States and Europe have forced institutional issuers to hold higher-quality reserves and absorb rising compliance costs, slowing the pace of net issuance. At the same time, elevated real yields on US Treasurys have increased the opportunity cost of holding stablecoins that offer no direct yield. That dynamic has dampened speculative minting and reinforced stablecoins’ role as infrastructure for payments, settlement and short-duration liquidity, rather th...7217 items