Found 8791 news
Cryptography startup Zama is plugging its privacy tech into T‑REX in a bid to let banks and asset managers trade sensitive assets on public blockchains without losing confidentiality. French cryptography startup Zama is integrating its protocol with Apex-backed T-REX Ledger to add a confidentiality layer for ERC-3643-based tokenized assets, a standard that lets issuers embed identity checks and transfer restrictions into tokenized securities. Zama, which raised $73 million in Series A funding in 2024 to commercialize fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), said the integration is intended to make confidentiality a built-in feature of tokenized asset infrastructure rather than an added layer. The integration is designed to allow institutions to use public blockchains without exposing sensitive positions and transaction data, an issue that has limited adoption of public networks for regulated assets. Read more
Onchain analyst EmberCN warned that Siren’s rally may stem from one party cornering spot supply to profit via derivatives. The Siren (SIREN) token plunged nearly 70% on Tuesday, reversing a rapid rally as onchain analysts warned that a small cluster of wallets may control a large share of the token’s supply. According to CoinGecko data, the token dropped nearly 70% from a high of $2.56 early Tuesday to a low of $0.79 on the same day. At the time of writing, Siren hovered around $1. The sell-off followed a steep run-up in SIREN, a BNB Chain token marketed as an AI analyst agent. Analysts at Bubblemaps and the pseudonymous researcher EmberCN said Monday that wallet data suggested the token’s holdings were highly concentrated. Read more
Past oil-war shocks lifted inflation and hurt risk appetite, which raises the risk of Bitcoin falling below $50,000 in 2026. Bitcoin (BTC) has been among the best-performing assets amid the US–Iran war, but signs of upside exhaustion are emerging due to an “out-of-control” bond market. Key takeaways: US benchmark yields may rise by 200 basis points if the US–Iran war drags on further. Read more
Bitcoin Yardstick data confirmed a new record for BTC price "deep value" in February as miners battled the lowest price levels in 15 months. Bitcoin (BTC) is “off the chart” in terms of value-for-money as price diverges from hash rate, a market analyst says. Key points: Bitcoin price action is diverging from hash rate to an extent never seen before. Read more
ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said private digital money cannot scale Europe’s tokenized markets on its own, pointing to Pontes and broader legal reform as next steps. Tokenized deposits and stablecoins need tokenized central bank money as a public settlement anchor if Europe’s tokenized financial markets are to scale, Piero Cipollone, a member of the European Central Bank’s Executive Board, said on Monday. Cipollone pointed to Pontes, the Eurosystem’s distributed ledger technology (DLT) settlement initiative, which is designed to connect market DLT platforms with the Eurosystem’s TARGET Services and provide settlement in central bank money. “Without tokenised central bank money, a seller of a tokenised security may receive payment in an asset they are not comfortable holding – one exposed to price volatility or credit risk – which limits the market’s ability to scale,” Cipollone said in a speech at the House of the Euro in Brussels on Monday. Read more
Nasdaq is wiring its collateral and surveillance systems into Talos’s institutional trading stack to target a $35 billion “trapped” collateral problem. Nasdaq will integrate its Calypso risk and collateral platform and trade surveillance system with digital asset infrastructure firm Talos’s institutional trading tools. The integration announced Monday aims to offer institutional clients a “unified” workflow for managing tokenized collateral and monitoring crypto and traditional assets for market abuse. It aims to ease a bottleneck in institutional tokenization, with Nasdaq citing internal research that roughly $35 billion in collateral sits tied up in “corrective and non-interest-bearing measures.” Nasdaq’s integration of its trade surveillance tools means that Talos clients will be able to run alerts for opaque tactics such as wash trading, spoofing and layering across the venues they access. Read more
Aave founder Stani Kulechov says the proposal will move to a binding onchain vote to formalize V4’s deployment on Ethereum. Aave’s decentralized autonomous organization backed a proposal to move its V4 protocol toward deployment on Ethereum mainnet, signaling broader support for the upgrade after weeks of governance tension and contributor exits. On Monday, the proposal to deploy Aave V4 on the Ethereum mainnet garnered near-unanimous support from the DAO, with more than 645,000 votes in favor and less than one vote against, and no abstentions, according to data from the offchain voting platform Snapshot. The vote marks a shift from earlier divisions within the Aave community, signaling broad alignment around the protocol’s direction as it moves toward formalizing V4’s deployment. Read more
Mass adoption risks crypto’s cypherpunk roots. Privacy as a permissionless foundation must reclaim DeFi from surveillance, TradFi and memecoin casinos. Opinion by: Dr Corey Petty, chief evangelist at Logos When early cryptocurrencies were conceptualized, the vision was not one of complex leverage strategies, celebrity rugpulls and government treasuries. Rather, cypherpunks sought, through cryptographic tools, to empower people through the privacy-given freedom to exchange goods and services without the threat of government overreach and mass corporate surveillance The crypto landscape is turning from one of decentralized networks into an extension of traditional finance. Centralized exchanges regularly account for over 80% of daily crypto transactions. If crypto is to hold onto its original ethos, privacy cannot be optional. Read more
The SEC’s handling of cases involving Justin Sun and Elon Musk was among the factors that caused the agency’s top enforcement official to quit, according to sources. Update (March 25, 12:18 am UTC): This article has been updated to add a response from the SEC. The US Securities and Exchange Commission's former top enforcement official reportedly clashed with the regulator’s top brass before resigning last week, with part of the reason being how the agency handled cases involving those close to US President Donald Trump. Margaret Ryan, the ex-director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, wanted to pursue fraud and other charges in cases involving those in Trump’s orbit, but was resisted by SEC Chair Paul Atkins and other Republican political appointees, Reuters reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. Read more
NovaBay Pharmaceuticals was founded in 2000 as a biopharmaceutical company developing eye care products and is now betting big on the Sky protocol and stablecoins. Shares in NovaBay Pharmaceuticals jumped nearly 19% after the company announced it would change its name to Stablecoin Development Corporation as part of its strategic crypto pivot. NovaBay Pharmaceuticals CEO Michael Kazley said in a statement on Monday that the company’s plan going forward is to access cash flows within the growing stablecoin economy. “The name change to Stablecoin Development Corporation reflects our conviction that stablecoins represent the most compelling structural opportunity in digital finance,” he said. Read more
Strategy is increasingly turning to perpetual preferred stocks to fund its Bitcoin strategy, with the company adding 90,000 BTC to its balance sheet so far this year. Michael Saylor’s Strategy has announced several capital-raising programs totaling $44.1 billion to fund Bitcoin purchases, including the sale of common shares and two of its dividend-paying equity vehicles. Strategy plans to raise up to $21 billion by selling Strategy (MSTR) stock and another $21 billion from its high-yield perpetual preferred stock, Stretch (STRC), via new at-the-market programs, the company said in an 8-K filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. Strategy also intends to sell up to $2.1 billion worth of Strike (STRK) — another of its perpetual preferred stock offerings. The company didn’t specify a timeline for the issuances, stating that shares may be sold “from time to time.” Read more
Rising inflation concerns weigh on Bitcoin’s breakout as traders refuse to take on bullish positions, despite Monday’s 4% price bounce. Key takeaways: Bearish Bitcoin futures premiums and low call option odds suggest traders remain skeptical despite BTC’s brief 4% relief rally. High oil prices and cautious Fed policy continue to pressure risk assets, while Bitcoin derivatives metrics signal a lack of conviction. Read more
A letter to the influencer and the CEO of his holding company expressed concerns about whether the two will allow minors to trade crypto through a recently acquired banking app. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has raised concerns about whether YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, better known as “MrBeast,” intends to market cryptocurrency to teenagers and young adults following his purchase of a mobile banking app. In a Monday letter to Donaldson, Warren questioned whether the online influencer planned to use his company’s acquisition of the mobile banking app Step to push crypto transactions and purchases on young people. Donaldson, a YouTuber who grew an online following due in part to his stunts and financial giveaways, founded his holding company, Beast Industries, in 2012 with the launch of his channel. In February, the company acquired Step, with a reported seven million-person user base. At the time, Donaldson said the purchase was aimed at “giv[ing] millions of young people the financial foundation I nev...
Forrester says Stripe’s Machine Payments Protocol reflects a shift toward automated transactions, as AI agents remove behavioral barriers that hindered micropayments. Stripe’s newly launched Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) could mark a turning point for micropayments — a long-promised but underutilized use case in crypto and beyond — as AI agents reshape how transactions are made. That’s the key takeaway from newly published analysis by Forrester senior analyst Meng Liu, who argues that MPP may succeed where decades of earlier efforts failed. Introduced earlier this month, MPP enables AI agents to execute transactions automatically, removing the need for human approval at each step. It is described as an open protocol for coordinating payments between AI agents and services. Liu frames this as a structural shift from human-initiated payments to machine-to-machine transactions. Read more
The platform lets investors create and rebalance onchain equity portfolios while directly holding the underlying assets. Glider and Ondo Finance have introduced a platform to let retail investors build and automate custom portfolios of tokenized US stocks, offering direct exposure to equities without a brokerage account. According to the announcement, the platform allows users to create personalized baskets of onchain stocks that track real-world assets, removing the need for wallets, gas fees or manual transaction management. Glider co-founder and CEO Brian Huang told Cointelegraph that unlike traditional exchange-traded funds, which bundle assets into fixed products, the platform lets users construct index-like portfolios with custom weightings that are automatically maintained, avoiding reliance on pooled products. Read more
The financial regulator’s plan to reinterpret how federal securities laws apply to crypto assets is ”pending review” by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has forwarded its proposal to have most crypto assets not treated as securities under federal law to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. According to information available through the US General Services Administration, on Friday the SEC sent two proposed rules to the White House for review, including its interpretative notice from last week regarding which digital assets the agency could consider a security under federal law. As of Monday, government records showed the proposal as “pending review” by the White House, potentially changing how the SEC handles regulation and enforcement of digital assets. Read more
The prediction bourse rolls out stricter trading safeguards and market limits across its platforms as it seeks regulatory alignment and addresses concerns over fairness. Prediction platform Polymarket has updated its market integrity rules to align more closely with regulatory standards and expand its presence as a regulated trading platform amid growing scrutiny of manipulation and insider trading risks. In a Monday announcement, the company outlined updated rules governing both its global decentralized finance platform and its US exchange, which operates under compliance oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The changes come amid growing scrutiny from regulators and politicians over risks tied to insider trading, market manipulation, and the proliferation of controversial event-based contracts. Read more
Bitcoin price topped $71,600 at the US market open, but the rally lacked sustained spot volumes. Can the bulls hold BTC above $70,000? Bitcoin (BTC) spot volumes on Binance have dropped to their lowest level since September 2023, indicating that the current intraday price rise may not be backed by strong demand. The rally above $71,700 on Monday appears to be driven mainly by news headlines and liquidations in the Bitcoin futures markets. Crypto analyst Darkfost said that March is on track to record the lowest Binance spot volume since Q3 2023, at roughly $52 billion, compared to the $88 billion recorded in September 2023. The activity levels align with the prior bear market conditions, pointing to the reduced participation. Read more
The framework aims to let AI agents hold funds and execute transactions across blockchains, addressing fragmented wallets and key management. MoonPay has released an open-source wallet standard designed to let AI agents hold funds and execute transactions across blockchains, addressing a key gap in how autonomous software interacts with crypto systems. According to Monday’s announcement, the standard introduces a shared way for AI agents to access and use wallets across tools and blockchains, replacing fragmented setups where each system manages its own keys and balances. It allows agents to operate from a single pool of funds rather than across multiple disconnected accounts. “AI agents can employ standard building blocks, such as APIs, to communicate with other agents and humans, receive and send money, and access and interact with the internet,” according to researchers at MIT Sloan. Read more8791 items