Author: NBTC

Benjamin Cowen, founder of the financial analysis platform Into The Cryptoverse and a renowned cryptocurrency strategist, made striking statements in his latest analysis that closely concern global markets and especially Bitcoin (BTC) investors. Cowen pointed out that the market’s expectations regarding the Fed’s interest rate policies may be based on a flawed premise. Cowen stated that traditional finance and cryptocurrency markets have entered a period of extreme sensitivity to the Fed’s actions, and that the interest rate path “considered certain” by the mainstream media and the majority of investors could take a turn for the worse. The analyst added that…

As billions of dollars continue flowing into proprietary AI companies, one organization is placing a major bet on a different future for artificial intelligence. Sentient Foundation has announced a $42 million Open Source AGI Grant and Investment Program, one of the largest funding initiatives dedicated exclusively to supporting developers, researchers, startups, and public-goods projects building open-source artificial general intelligence. The initiative reflects a growing belief among parts of the AI community that the future of intelligence should remain accessible rather than controlled by a handful of companies. And yes, the number was chosen intentionally. According to the Foundation, the $42…

Strobe Finance, the only native decentralized lending protocol on the $XRP Ledger’s EVM Sidechain, has announced that it is winding down and has given users until July 13 to repay their loans. The users also have until July 20 to withdraw their deposits before the front end closes permanently. That shutdown will leave the XRPL EVM Sidechain without a functioning lending market and has raised pointed questions about whether the network can support retail-focused DeFi projects at all. What Happened, and What Users Need to Know In a post on X published late Tuesday, the Strobe team bluntly laid out…

If you are an Illinois resident and hold crypto in a centralized exchange, a new cost is coming that most investors have not heard about yet. Starting January 1, 2027, Illinois will impose a 0.2% tax on crypto asset transfers under a law that has already been signed. Unlike federal capital gains taxes, this one hits you every time you move & withdraw crypto, not just when you sell. What Illinois’ 0.2% Crypto Transfer Tax Actually Does The new law imposes a 0.2% tax on transfers of crypto assets made by Illinois residents via centralized exchanges. The tax is collected…

Take the Lazarus Group’s exploitation of Tornado Cash and the Ronin Bridge. Sanctioned wallets? None detected. Prohibited tokens? All clear. Protocol compliance? Perfect. Yet $600 million vanished through wallet-hopping across jurisdictions, beyond the reach of previous systems to contextualize. FTX complied with regulations until customer funds were commingled. Mango Markets’ oracle was hacked while protocols remained compliant. The fraud happened in the context, not the code. Through my travels as a CEO in digital asset markets, I’ve witnessed tokenization transform global financial hubs. Real estate in Dubai, tokenized by a special-purpose vehicle in the Cayman Islands, sold on a Singapore…

Bitcoin crashed to $58,700 on Thursday and now options traders are convinced it will crash as far as $52,000 before the year is over, which would be its lowest level since August 2024. That decline saw Bitcoin fall by almost 52% from its all-time high and left the OG crypto below the $60,000 level, which traders had sought to defend throughout the year. This area has remained supportive of the price since February, again defended for the first two weeks of June before succumbing to an advance to just above $67,000. The outlook for options trading is not looking good…

Cathie Wood has dismissed mounting inflation fears despite U.S. headline CPI rising to 4.2% in May, arguing that underlying price pressures are close to disappearing. According to the ARK Invest CEO, inflation fears dominated conversations during her recent investor meetings across Asia and Europe, where many participants questioned whether persistent price growth would force the Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy further. In a series of X posts, Wood said she was surprised by how strongly investors expected inflation to remain elevated, adding that she believes inflation could weaken sharply for reasons extending beyond lower oil prices. The comments come…

Mike Higgins, International CEO of Ripple Prime, was a part of the Ripple Quarterly Webinar hosted by Token Relations, which was held on Monday, June 22.The top executive spoke extensively about Ripple Prime, how Ripple USD ($RLUSD) stablecoin fits into the “Prime Strategy,” and the company’s broader institutional stack. In a recent X post, Higgins highlighted the discussion at the Ripple Quarterly Webinar, which broke down all things about Ripple Prime as “a great conversation.” According to the CEO of Ripple Prime, the lines between TradFi and digital assets are disappearing. In addition, Higgins revealed that $RLUSD and $XRP are…

The CFTC asked the public to weigh in on running standard futures around the clock and on listing perpetual contracts tied to physically delivered energy commodities such as crude oil. The request opens the door to importing the crypto-native perpetual design into the oil and gas derivatives markets. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued the request for comment Monday afternoon, organizing it around two questions. The first asks how standard futures, including energy futures, would function on a 24/7 schedule with no change to their fixed expiration, delivery, or settlement terms. The second asks what happens when perpetual contracts reference…

You can now take a leveraged position on a rocket company that has never sold a public share. The mechanics are clever, the demand is obvious, and the pricing problem sitting underneath it is the part nobody is rushing to explain. On June 16, Brian Armstrong unveiled what Coinbase calls the Everything Exchange, a sweeping update that folds crypto, stocks, prediction markets, and futures into a single account. Buried in the announcement was a product that deserves its own conversation: pre-IPO perpetual futures linked to private companies, starting with SpaceX and with OpenAI and Anthropic set to follow. The pitch…