Found 11133 news
The digital wallet allows insurance premiums and claims to be settled in crypto through a regulated custody partnership with Zodia Custody. Dubai Insurance has launched a crypto-enabled digital wallet that allows policyholders to pay insurance premiums and receive claims settlements in digital assets. The wallet is designed to support the receipt of premiums and the payment of insurance claims in digital assets and is built on institutional custody infrastructure provided by Zodia Custody. The company said the wallet operates within existing regulatory and compliance frameworks in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and described it as the first such offering in the country’s insurance sector. Read more
Bitcoin disappointed with an apparent failed breakout above $90,000 after gold soared to fresh highs and US dollar strength nosedived. Bitcoin (BTC) attempted a rebound past $90,000 at Wednesday’s Wall Street open as markets awaited US macro cues. Key points: Bitcoin struggles to hold a $90,000 uptick as gold surges and US dollar strength crumbles. Read more
Fidelity will issue a stablecoin through its newly approved national trust bank, signaling deeper institutional use of blockchain-based payment infrastructure. Fidelity Investments plans to launch a new stablecoin next month, marking a logical next step for the asset manager as it expands its digital-asset infrastructure following conditional approval for a national trust bank from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Bloomberg reported Wednesday that the Fidelity Digital Dollar, or FIDD, will be issued by Fidelity Digital Assets, National Association, the national trust bank approved by US regulators in December. Fidelity Digital Assets president Mike O’Reilly told the publication that stablecoins could “serve as foundational payment and settlement services,” citing benefits such as real-time settlement and round-the-clock availability. Read more
HYPE has entered a classic breakout stage after its onchain activity exploded, with a 45% price rally to $50 next in the cards. Hyperliquid's native token, HYPE (HYPE), is up 23% over the last 24 hours to trade at $33, significantly outperforming other top-cap cryptocurrencies. The altcoin has gained 58% over the last three days to an eight-week high of $34.50 as commodities trading on Hyperliquid surged to new highs. Key takeaways: HYPE has surged over 57% in 72 hours, driven by high commodities trading on Hyperliquid HIP-3 DEXs. Read more
Banks warn stablecoins could siphon deposits from the banking system, but policy and regulatory experts say there’s little evidence of it happening yet. Banks warn that stablecoins, especially those paying yield, could pull deposits out of the banking system, but policy and finance experts say there’s little evidence of that so far. Major US bank Standard Chartered recently estimated in a research note that increasing stablecoin adoption could drain bank deposits. The report estimates “that US bank deposits will decrease by one-third of stablecoin market cap,” which stood at $308.15 billion at time of writing, according to DeFiLlama data. The debate has intensified as US lawmakers weigh whether to prohibit interest on stablecoin holdings under a proposed version of the crypto market structure bill, or CLARITY Act, which has been delayed by protests from inside the crypto industry despite banking sector support. Read more
Hashrate fell sharply as Bitcoin miners curtailed operations during extreme winter conditions in the US, boosting profitability for companies that stayed online. Bitcoin mining stocks saw a significant bump on Wednesday after the US winter storm forced some companies to wind down operations, leading to lower block competition and more profitable mining operations. Shares of several major mining companies posted double-digit gains over the past 24 hours. TeraWulf rose about 11%, Iren Limited gained 14% and Cipher Mining climbed about 13%, according to data from Barchart. The rally occurred days after the Bitcoin network’s hashrate sank to a seven-month low of 663 exahashes per second (EH/s) on Sunday, a 40% drop in two days due to a severe winter storm battering the US. Read more
Bitget EU expects MiCA approval in Austria by mid-2026 and plans a broker-led model with strict asset standards for European users. Bitget appointed former Bitpanda chief legal officer and prior KuCoin EU head Oliver Stauber as CEO of Bitget EU to lead the exchange’s Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) expansion and set up its new European headquarters in Vienna. The entity, which applied for a MiCA license in Austria in 2025, expects regulatory approval in the second quarter of 2026 and will not offer services in the European Economic Area (EEA) until authorization is granted, Stauber told Cointelegraph. He said that Bitget EU will ring‑fence EEA users from the offshore Bitget platform via Internet Protocol (IP) address detection and enhanced Know Your Customer (KYC) controls designed to prevent unlicensed entities from onboarding residents through geographic workarounds, marketing or reverse solicitation. Read more
DeFi is still out of scope for DAC8 and CARF, but AML enforcement trends suggest that may not last, according to Taxbit’s Colby Mangels. The European Union’s new cryptocurrency tax reporting framework is built around what governments can immediately enforce, leaving decentralized finance (DeFi) outside its scope for now. A former Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) official who worked on the Crypto Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) said that this gap is a deliberate focus and not a blind spot. “It doesn’t make sense to go to your grandma and ask her to give you all the tax reporting on crypto just because you happened to work with her over a certain period,” Colby Mangels, Taxbit’s global head of government solutions and a former OECD adviser, told Cointelegraph. “You really have to go to the intermediaries that are doing this as a business.” Read more
Speculative capital is flowing into emerging tech opportunities, as progress with US crypto regulations continues to stall, limiting investor appetite for digital assets, Delphi Digital said. Speculative capital is increasingly flowing out of cryptocurrency markets and into other emerging technologies including artificial intelligence and robotics, according to research company Delphi Digital. Last year’s underperformance of most altcoin sectors shows that crypto is no longer the “default destination” for speculative capital seeking higher-risk opportunities, wrote Delphi Digital in a Wednesday X post. The trend illustrates that emerging tech opportunities may continue limiting investment into the wider cryptocurrency space, specifically from risk-hungry investors looking for the sectors with the highest risk-to-return profiles. Read more
WisdomTree adds Solana to its tokenized fund lineup, citing transaction speed as it expands a regulated multi-chain strategy. American asset management company WisdomTree said on Wednesday that it is expanding its tokenized funds onto the Solana network as part of its “multi-chain deployment strategy.” The exchange-traded product issuer said the strategic expansion enables both institutional and retail users to “mint, trade, and hold WisdomTree’s full suite of tokenized funds on Solana, supporting the growth of on-chain offerings.” All of the company’s tokenized funds — including money market, equities, fixed income, alternatives, and asset allocation — can now be traded on Solana. Read more
Physical co-location and nanosecond advantages end as alpha shifts onchain. High-frequency trading firms own blockchain infrastructure. Opinion by: Annabelle Huang, co-founder and CEO of Altius Labs For centuries, the world’s traders and speculators have pursued one thing above all else: alpha. Not just returns, but an edge — a structural advantage that lets them capture value before everyone else. In modern times, they’ve achieved this through speed and precision, often beating the competition by mere nanoseconds. As markets migrate to blockchain rails, however, the nature of alpha itself is shifting. Future alpha won’t come from co-locating servers next to an exchange or shaving nanoseconds off fiber routes. Rather, it will emerge from using onchain infrastructure in unique ways. Read more
Tether increases physical gold holdings to 130 metric tons while Coinbase promotes futures trading as Bitcoin lags and gold tops $5,300 per ounce. As gold prices surged to $5,300 this week, Tether and Coinbase — the two companies behind the world’s largest US dollar stablecoins — are taking different approaches to gaining exposure to the precious metal. Spot gold climbed above $5,300 per ounce on Wednesday, posting a record high of $5,311 at 3:30 am UTC, according to TradingView data. Amid the rally, Tether, issuer of USDt (USDT), the world’s largest stablecoin, doubled down on its gold accumulation, while Coinbase, a key partner in the USDC (USDC) stablecoin consortium, promoted access to gold futures on its platform. Read more
The Financial Services Commission chief says ownership limits are still under negotiation as lawmakers debate the Digital Asset Basic Act ahead of a mid-February deadline. South Korea’s top financial regulator said crypto exchanges should face ownership limits similar to those applied to securities markets, signaling a harder public stance on governance reforms under the country’s proposed Digital Asset Basic Act. According to a report by The Korea Times, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) Chair Lee Eog-weon said licensed crypto exchanges should no longer be treated as ordinary private companies but as entities with public-infrastructure characteristics. Lee’s comments come as the FSC reviews a proposal to cap major shareholders’ stakes in crypto exchanges at around 15% to 20%, a measure that has drawn resistance from exchange operators and raised concerns within the ruling Democratic Party. Read more
European Central Bank executive Piero Cipollone has argued that rising geopolitical tensions make a European-controlled payments system a strategic necessity. Rising geopolitical tensions are strengthening the case for a European-controlled digital payments system, according to European Central Bank (ECB) executive board member Piero Cipollone. In an interview with Spanish newspaper El País, shared by the ECB on Wednesday, Cipollone described the proposed digital euro as “public money in digital form,” arguing that it was needed to complement cash and address an increasingly fragmented payments landscape in Europe, especially as e-commerce grows. He noted that cash accounted for around a quarter (24%) of day-to-day transaction value in 2024, down sharply from 2019 (40%), and said the ECB had a responsibility to adapt how it provided money as a public good. Read more
Bitcoin ETF investors contend with price dropping to their aggregate entry level, but a crypto executive claims new institutions are lining up. Bitcoin (BTC) institutional investors face a test of “conviction” as exchange-traded fund (ETF) holdings tumble by $6 billion. Key points: Bitcoin ETF investors now face falling into aggregate loss on their holdings. Read more
Bitcoin price traded below $90,000 as investors braced for Jerome Powell’s post-FOMC speech that could trigger volatile swings toward key BTC price levels. Bitcoin (BTC) is attempting to break the resistance at $90,000 on Wednesday, as traders expect volatile price swings before and after the US policy decision on interest rate cuts. Key takeaways: The odds of the US Federal Reserve leaving interest rates unchanged today are 100%. Read more
A wallet linked to an alleged theft of US government-seized crypto launched a Solana memecoin on Pump.fun that later crashed 97%, raising tokenomics red flags. A cryptocurrency wallet linked by blockchain investigators to an alleged theft of US government-controlled crypto holdings launched a Solana-based memecoin that later collapsed, renewing scrutiny of memecoin launch practices and onchain token distribution risks. The token, called John Daghita (LICK), was created on the Pump.fun launchpad and lost about 97% of its value within its first day of trading, according to onchain data. The token briefly reached a market capitalization of about $915,000 before falling below $25,000 by the time of writing. Leading up to the rally, the token deployer address made four acquisitions, while the coin was still trading below the $21,000 market capitalization, Pump.fun data shows. Read more11133 items