Author: NBTC
Crypto finance is only now beginning to provide an environment that matches traditional finance: ways to earn steadier, more predictable returns — similar to bonds or savings products, according to Aave Labs founder Stani Kulechov and Ethena CEO Guy Young. “Most fixed income is like the distribution of risk in different formats … basically just slicing and dicing and distributing risk,” Young said during a panel at Digital Asset Summit (DAS) in New York. “This piece of DeFi was probably the least featured two years ago.” Until recently, crypto users mostly traded tokens or borrowed against them, often chasing high,…
Wall Street’s confidence in Coinbase Global Inc. (COIN) continued to crumble Analysts at Monness, Crespi, Hardt has slammed cryptocurrency giant Coinbase with a rather rare double downgrade. The stock of America’s leading cryptocurrency exchange has been slashed directly from “Buy” to “Sell.” The firm cited “prolonged crypto market weakness” as the key reason behind the downgrade. More pain? The downgrade is particularly stinging because it does not foresee a speedy recovery for the embattled market. Monness, Crespi, Hardt cut their forecasts for Coinbase’s revenue, EBITDA, and earnings per share (EPS). The firm expects the current market malaise to last for…
Victims of a Chinese investment fraud are challenging a United Kingdom proposal to compensate them through a Chinese redress scheme, arguing the plan could leave British authorities holding much of the upside from roughly 61,000 Bitcoin seized in a money-laundering investigation. According to the Financial Times, citing court documents, the dispute has moved into the UK High Court as groups representing victims seek to recover funds linked to the cryptocurrency seized by police in London. The Bitcoin ($BTC) haul is now worth about 3.2 billion pounds ($4.3 billion) after rising sharply in value since the assets were confiscated. Law firm…
The Amazing Life of Chun Wang: From OG Bitcoin Miner to Astronaut On March 31, 2025, Chun Wang, co-founder of the historic Bitcoin mining pool f2pool, launched as mission commander of Fram2—the first crewed spacecraft to enter a polar orbit. The SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center on a Falcon 9 rocket into a 90-degree retrograde inclination orbit passing directly over the North and South Poles. No prior crewed mission had achieved this trajectory; the previous highest inclination for humans in orbit was 65 degrees on the Soviet Vostok 6 flight in 1963. In an…
Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Fira said on Tuesday it was launching with about $450 million in deposits, highlighting demand for fixed-rate onchain credit. Fira said the protocol’s fixed-rate credit market allows users to lock borrowing costs and lending returns for defined periods by organizing lending around maturities rather than floating utilization-based rates, according to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph. The fixed-rate model differs from most DeFi lending protocols, where borrowers annot lock funding costs, and lenders cannot predict returns, making long-term DeFi lending less predictable. Fira’s said its model organizes markets by maturity and determines interest rates by…
The Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement (J5) published two advisories on Thursday warning that over the counter (OTC) crypto trading desks and payment processors are being used to obfuscate and move funds tied to criminal activity. The group, which is made up of tax bodies from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, the U.S. and the UK, said that average daily trading volume for OTC desks totalled $1.44 billion—far higher than its $74.5 million estimated volume for exchanges. “These desks provide clients with anonymity and reliability when moving large sums of money or cryptocurrency, thus potentially functioning as an obfuscation tool…
An initiative to ban the U.S. Federal Reserve from issuing a government-run digital dollar has been approved in an overwhelmingly bipartisan 89-10 vote in the Senate, but it’s tucked inside a housing bill that may run into headwinds in the U.S. House of Representatives. The effort to outlaw a central bank digital currency (CBDC) has long been a favorite of Republican lawmakers, though the U.S. government has never advanced beyond the research stage for establishing a government token that could compete with privately issued stablecoins (and rival other CBDCs pursued by China and other jurisdictions). The 21st Century ROAD to…
The South Korean government is investing 3 billion won (about $2 million) to build an AI-powered tracking system to monitor gains on cryptocurrency ahead of its new tax laws set to take effect on Jan 1, 2027. While the South Korean government is moving ahead with its plans for taxing cryptocurrency, U.S. lawmakers remain divided over de minimis exemptions for small payments, with Coinbase now being accused of attempting to secure the exemption for stablecoins exclusively. How will South Korea track crypto transactions to enforce its new tax laws? The South Korean National Tax Service (NTS) announced that it has…
In today’s newsletter, Joshua De Vos, head of research at CoinDesk, summarizes their latest crypto ETF report covering U.S. adoption, the speed at which it’s happening and asset concentration. In Keep Reading, we link to the U.S. and Global ETF reports for those who want to do a deeper dive. – Sarah Morton Digital assets exchange-traded product landscape: past, present and future Crypto for Advisors – February – Digital Asset ETPs Digital asset Exchange-Traded Products (ETPs) are now one of the clearest signals of how quickly crypto is being integrated into traditional portfolio infrastructure. As presented in CoinDesk’s latest research…
A significant policy step regarding Bitcoin’s position within the US banking system has emerged. The Fed announced that next week it will release a new draft of publicly available regulations on how the country’s largest banks should implement Basel risk weighting rules. Under current Basel banking regulations, Bitcoin is classified as a very high-risk asset for banks. The 1250% risk weighting assigned to $BTC in the regulations means a stricter capital requirement than almost all other asset classes. This makes it significantly more difficult for banks to hold $BTC on their balance sheets or provide financial services to Bitcoin-related companies.…