Author: NBTC

Bitcoin is trading at $76,992.66, up 1.1% over 24 hours but roughly flat for the week, as experts weigh whether today’s CPI print could push price below $75,000 ahead of next week’s Clarity Act vote and Fed decision. Why CPI Matters Today Wednesday’s hotter-than-expected PPI reading triggered a brief selloff, with Bitcoin down about 1%, Solana down 1% to 2%, and XRP down roughly 4%, though those losses have since fully retraced. Core CPI year-over-year is expected at 2.4%, down slightly from 2.5%. Analysts say they don’t expect that decline to materialize, predicting CPI comes in hotter and could reignite…

Cryptocurrency payments company MoonPay is set to acquire private-markets investment platform North Capital to support its tokenization efforts, according to an emailed announcement Wednesday. Salt Lake City, Utah-based North Capital, whose platform boasts around $9 billion in primary and secondary transaction volume, will become a wholly owned subsidiary of MoonPay after the transaction closes, subject to regulatory approval. The all-stock deal is worth over $60 million, sources familiar with the matter told CoinDesk. The acquisition will support MoonPay’s aim of “building the regulatory foundation to support mass adoption of tokenized real-world assets,” according to CEO and founder Ivan Soto-Wright. “We…

Cosmos has rolled out a new platform called the Partner Network, a move the project says is meant to speed up tokenized finance by linking users with vetted digital asset service providers. The launch, announced on September 17, 2026, via Cosmos’ official Twitter account, arrives at a moment when the broader crypto market is showing mixed signals, and it raises an obvious question: can a new marketplace of vendors actually move the needle for a network whose token has been trading with almost no measurable volume? Key takeaways Cosmos launched its Partner Network platform on September 17, 2026, aimed squarely…

A survey of US crypto investors has found that about one in five who filed or planned to file a tax extension received an incomplete 1099-DA or were unsure whether the form matched their trades. Awaken Tax’s August survey found that another 21% of respondents who had filed, or planned to file, an extension were still waiting for information from an exchange or crypto platform. The findings concern a group of taxpayers trying to finish 2025 returns during the first filing season for Form 1099-DA, which brokers use to report certain digital asset transactions to the Internal Revenue Service. The…

Crypto exchange Gemini has received a Major Payment Institution (MPI) license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), completing its transition from in-principle approval granted nearly two years ago. On Wednesday, Gemini said the license was awarded to Gemini Digital Payments Singapore, its local entity. The MAS Financial Institutions Directory lists the company as authorized to provide digital payment token services and cross-border money transfers. MPI license holders can provide regulated payment services without being subject to the transaction-volume limits imposed on standard payment institutions. However, MAS said major payment institutions face more comprehensive regulation because their operations’ scale poses…

Block has joined the x402 Foundation and contributed Bitcoin Lightning support to the open payment protocol used by AI agents, web services and applications. Block’s September 24 announcement states that the company has brought Lightning payments into x402 as part of its work on agentic commerce. The payment company said Lightning fits transactions that require low costs, fast settlement and repeated small payments. Block has joined the x402 Foundation, an open standard for agentic payments, to help build the rails that will let people, businesses, and agents pay and get paid.We’ve also contributed Bitcoin Lightning payments, which is purpose-built for…

Bitcoin trades nonstop, but a decade of data shows its volatility increasingly follows Wall Street’s clock. A recent study found that the nine hours from 13:00 to 21:59 UTC accounted for 50.6% of Bitcoin’s daily realized variance between 2022 and 2025, up from 38.4% in 2016-2018. Those hours represent just 37.5% of a full day, suggesting price discovery has become increasingly concentrated while Bitcoin itself continues trading around the clock. The research, based on 87,672 hourly observations from Kraken’s XBT/USD market between 2016 and 2025, found the shift extends beyond higher activity during American business hours. Bitcoin’s volatility peak now…

Peaq’s integration with Solana via Sunrise represents a significant milestone in the altcoin sector. This move highlights the growing synergy between emerging blockchain technologies and traditional industries. As Peaq leverages Solana’s capabilities, it could lead to enhancements in service offerings and operational efficiencies, impacting the broader market positively. More details can be found in the source here. The Latest Peaq’s launch on Solana is facilitated through Sunrise, a strategic initiative aimed at enhancing blockchain capabilities. This integration is expected to leverage Solana’s high-speed and low-cost transaction features, benefiting Peaq’s ecosystem. With Solana recognized for its scalability, this partnership is poised…

States have tried to wrangle prediction markets offering sports-related contracts under their regulatory frameworks since they started taking off after the 2024 election, arguing that these markets are competing with state gambling platforms and offering identical products to gambling sites and apps. For many states, the issue is that federally regulated platforms do not pay state taxes, while still competing with state-regulated platforms. Another major point of contention is the fact that prediction markets often offer their products to people as young as 18, rather than 21, like most state gambling operators. In Friday’s ruling, the three-judge panel said it…

U.S. Bancorp’s (USB) U.S. Bank is laying the groundwork to put its own stablecoin to work, completing a live cross-border payment and weighing broader uses across its payments and treasury business. The Minneapolis-based lender completed a transaction with USBDC, its proprietary U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, between U.S. Bank entities in North America and Europe, according to a Wednesday statement. The move comes as stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies tied to fiat money like the U.S. dollar, become an increasingly common part of everyday finance. Once used mainly by crypto traders to move money between exchanges, dollar-pegged tokens are spreading into payments, remittances and…