Author: NBTC
Stablecoins are moving beyond crypto experimentation and into trusted financial infrastructure, OKX said, as it announced the launch of a new debit card in Europe. “Momentum is building fast,” Erald Ghoos, CEO of OKX Europe, told CoinDesk. “Regulators are putting real guardrails in place, major banks are not only taking them seriously for payments and settlements but are participating in industry-wide EU initiatives to become issuers, and everyday users are choosing faster, cheaper digital payments.” European regulators have accelerated that momentum through the rollout of the EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) framework, which brings stablecoin issuers and crypto service…
Changpeng Zhao (CZ), the founder and former CEO of Binance, made noteworthy statements about his career and the future of the crypto sector in an interview given during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Zhao said he no longer has the same motivation to start new ventures as he did in the past. Zhao stated, “I don’t have the same drive to start new projects as I used to. Entrepreneurship is a very tiring process, and once I’ve experienced it, it doesn’t seem possible for me to start again at the same pace. Therefore, I am currently focusing mainly…
There will come a time when this newsletter is not about crypto market structure legislation. But this is not that time. You’re reading State of Crypto, a CoinDesk newsletter looking at the intersection of cryptocurrency and government. Click here to sign up for future editions. The narrative The Senate Agriculture Committee published its new draft crypto market structure bill last Wednesday. Why it matters This bill, like its Banking Committee counterpart, aims to reshape the federal regulatory framework to define how regulators like the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission will oversee the crypto markets. And once…
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…
Farcaster founder Dan Romero has said that his decentralized social media firm “isn’t shutting down” after rumors of its closure circulated following Neynar’s acquisition of the platform. Romero dispelled the rumors yesterday in a post on X which also clarified that Merkle Manufactory, a contributor to the Farcaster protocol, will return the $180 million it raised from investors during its Series A funding round. He said, “The acquirer, Neynar, is a venture-backed startup and plans to shift Farcaster in a more developer-focused direction.” Read more: Comparing Nostr to social media alternatives BlueSky, Lens, and Mastodon It had managed to secure…
The proposed restrictions on stablecoin yields under the US CLARITY Act risk driving capital out of regulated markets and into offshore, opaque financial structures. Colin Butler, head of markets at Mega Matrix, said banning compliant stablecoins from offering yield would not protect the US financial system, but instead sideline regulated institutions while accelerating capital migration beyond US oversight. “There’s always going to be demand for yield,” Butler told Cointelegraph, adding that if compliant stablecoins can’t offer it, capital will simply move “offshore or into synthetic structures that sit outside the regulatory perimeter.” Under the recently enacted GENIUS Act, payment stablecoins…
BitMart to launch trading pair USAT/$USDT on January 28, 2026, effective 5:00 AM UTC. The stablecoin segment is dominating with $315.49 billion in market cap. The USAT listing comes when the US Dollar has plunged to a near 4-year low. BitMart, a digital asset exchange platform, has announced that it will list a trading pair of USAT. Deposits are available with trading scheduled to go live soon. The development comes at a time when the US Dollar has dropped to a near 4-year low. BitMart earlier listed a trading pair of KABOSU. USAT on BitMart BitMart has announced that it…
There is no legal way for Web3 prediction markets to operate in Ukraine under current laws, according to a senior official involved in shaping the country’s digital economy policy. In comments shared with CoinDesk days after Ukraine blocked access to Polymarket and nearly 200 gambling-related websites Dmitry Nikolaievskyi, chief legal officer at the Project Office for the Development of Ukraine’s Digital Economy at the Ministry of Digital Transformation, revealed a deadlock for Web3 prediction markets in the country. Nikolaievskyi said that while the decision to ban Polymarket followed existing legal procedures, the underlying problem is that the country’s legal framework…
Binance Futures announced it will delist multiple USDⓈ-M perpetual futures contracts as part of updating its product portfolio and risk management framework. According to the official statement from the exchange, all open positions in the 42USDT, COMMONUSDT, CUDISUSDT, and EPTUSDT perpetual contracts will be closed on January 30, 2026, at 12:00 PM, and an automatic settlement process will be implemented. Following the completion of settlement, these contracts will be completely removed from the Binance Futures platform. Binance has advised users to manually close their open positions before the specified date to mitigate potential risks. Furthermore, new order placement for these…
Bonzo Vaults offers automated yield strategies via EVM smart contracts that rebalance and auto-compound on the Hedera network. $HBAR, HBARX, $USDC, BONZO, SAUCE, DOVU, PACK, and JAM are supported, and wETH/wBTC (ERC-20) is scheduled for support. Bonzo Finance Labs has introduced Bonzo Vaults, a beta product that automates yield strategies for Hedera decentralized finance (DeFi). The product relies on smart contracts based on the Ethereum Virtual Machine and deployed on Hedera. It executes deposits and strategy logic onchain. Each vault accepts a single asset or an asset pair and mints a vault share token that tracks a user’s portion of…