Author: NBTC

Central Bank of Brazil’s Statistics Highlight Rise of Crypto and Stablecoin Demand Brazil, the largest economy in Latam and one of the largest in the world, is experiencing record growth in crypto and stablecoin demand. According to an external sector statistics report released on Tuesday, the demand for cryptocurrency assets more than doubled in H1 2026, with purchase volumes reaching $14.68 billion. This represents a 135% increase compared to H1 2025, when Brazilians bought $6.24 billion in digital assets. Although the central bank statistics are not perfect, as they only account for volumes transacted by registered virtual asset service providers…

Ayo Akinyele, Head of Engineering at RippleX, recently explained what Ripple is now focusing on as it continues expanding the $XRP Ledger (XRPL). He shared this during the latest episode of RippleX’s Onchain Economy, where he discussed how blockchain is changing financial infrastructure and what comes next for the XRPL ecosystem. Akinyele said traditional finance is gradually being rebuilt with blockchain technology. He believes the on-chain economy creates new opportunities by changing how value is defined and transferred. Notably, he confirmed that, as Head of Engineering at RippleX, his team focuses on building the features that allow financial institutions to…

Fireblocks has been expanding its platform for banks, payment companies, asset managers and other financial institutions using stablecoins, tokenised assets and on-chain settlement. Elad Roisman’s appointment adds a regulatory-policy touch to that strategy. Roisman joins the digital asset infrastructure company as Chief Regulatory and Policy Officer and General Counsel, Regulatory. He will join Fireblocks’ executive leadership team immediately, the company said. From SEC to Fireblocks Roisman served as an SEC commissioner and acting chairman. Before that, he worked as Chief Counsel on the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and held roles at NYSE Euronext and in…

Bitcoin is trading around $65,167 on Coinbase, up roughly $900 on the day for a gain of about 1.4%. That comes less than 24 hours after the US Senate confirmed it would not vote on the CLARITY Act before the August recess. Bad news for regulation. Green candles anyway. Here is what the chart actually says. $BTC/USD price What Is Bitcoin Price Doing On The Chart Right Now? The daily chart shows a market that has stopped falling, not a market that has broken out. $Bitcoin sits at roughly $65,167, having opened at $64,267 and printed a daily high near…

Ethereum ($ETH) derivatives activity has remained largely range-bound over the past week as traders show limited conviction following a mild shift toward seller dominance. Net Taker Volume remains slightly negative, while Open Interest has struggled to sustain growth. Funding rates, however, continue to favor long positions, creating a mixed picture in which sellers control immediate market-order activity but bullish expectations have not disappeared. Ethereum’s price reflects the same uncertainty, trading within a narrow band formed by its short- and medium-term Exponential Moving Averages (EMAs). $ETH Net Taker Volume shows mild seller dominance Ethereum’s Net Taker Volume moved slightly into negative…

Central Bank Gold Demand Picks Up During Q2, Institutional Purchases Reach 288.9t After weak Q1 numbers, institutions have registered a rise in gold purchases in Q2, reaching a period record. The World Gold Council (WGC) found that central bank demand rebounded sharply in Q2 2026, with net purchases reaching 288.9 tonnes, a 62% increase compared to the same period in 2025 (177.9 tonnes). This also represents a sharp increase compared to revised numbers from Q1, when net accumulation slowed down to 57 tonnes. This recovery had two main drivers: an increase in purchases from the Central Bank of Poland and…

Edward Zimbardi, the alleged mastermind of a $165 million crypto Ponzi scheme, was returned to the United States after being deported from Fiji to face federal fraud and money laundering charges. On Monday, the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia said that Fijian authorities deported Zimbardi on Friday in coordination with the FBI and State Department. He was scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate judge in Los Angeles, with prosecutors seeking his detention pending proceedings in Georgia. Prosecutors allege Zimbardi promoted a scheme called “The Crypto Program” from June 2022 to August 2023 as an advertising-package…

The code is not yet scheduled for activation, and Guida has described it as a last-resort contingency rather than an imminent fork. The codebase public release still raises the stakes around BIP-110, a proposed temporary soft fork that would restrict how much nonfinancial data can be embedded in bitcoin transactions and could place enforcing nodes on a separate chain if miners refuse to cooperate. Guida Revives Bitcoin’s Nuclear Option Guida rebased proof-of-work change code written by Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr in 2017 onto a recent Bitcoin Knots codebase. The public branch updates the older concept for modern software and includes…

Ethereum price climbed nearly 2% on Aug. 17, rebounding from the $1,872 area as buyers defended short-term support and pushed $ETH above $1,900. Ethereum price action today According to data from crypto.news, Ethereum ($ETH) price traded at approximately $1,908 at the time of writing, up 1.7% on the day. The token had moved between an intraday low of $1,872 and a high of $1,912, according to the Binance daily chart. The recovery accelerated after $ETH reclaimed the $1,890 area, which had limited price advances during the previous three sessions. Buyers then pushed the token through $1,900, although the move had…

The Lessons from the 2026 Bear Market During the company’s second-quarter earnings call, Le revealed that the “biggest lesson” of 2026 was the need to maintain liquid U.S. dollars to fund its dividend obligations on its Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock ). “We thought that liquid Bitcoin would be important, but what Mike [Michael Saylor] mentioned earlier is that the people who are holding these preferreds don’t look at Bitcoin the way they look at U.S. dollars,” Le added. As of this writing, Strategy maintains $3.75 billion in cash reserves, sufficient to cover more than two years of its dividend and…