Author: NBTC

Kaledora Fontana Kiernan-Lin is putting a timeline on her bold prediction: the global contract-for-difference (CFD) broker market faces major disruption from decentralized finance within five years. The co-founder and CEO of Ostium, a blockchain-based perpetual swaps platform, recently secured $20 million in Series A funding from General Catalyst and Jump Crypto to back that thesis. In an interview with FinanceMagnates.com, Kiernan-Lin laid out why she believes retail foreign exchange and commodities traders will abandon traditional CFD brokers for on-chain alternatives that offer transparent pricing and self-custody of funds. “The ‘perpification’ of markets – where every asset becomes a liquid, tradeable…

BlackRock (BLK), the world’s largest asset manager, highlighted cryptocurrency and tokenized assets as important investment themes in a new report exploring the trends it says are shaping markets this year. Though artificial intelligence and energy infrastructure take center stage, crypto still earns attention, with bitcoin BTC$90,226.42, ether ETH$3,005.51 and stablecoins all mentioned in the 2026 Thematic Outlook. The team, led by Jay Jacobs, the company’s head of U.S. equity exchange-traded funds (ETFs), included crypto among a broader list of “themes driving markets in unprecedented ways.” Though brief, mentions of tokenization and digital assets carry weight coming from a firm managing…

US lawmakers are expected to return to Capitol Hill on Wednesday after inclement weather delayed committee meetings and votes, with attention turning to how senators will handle proposed amendments to a long-awaited crypto market structure bill. On Thursday, senators on the Senate Agriculture Committee are scheduled to meet for a markup on the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act (DCIA), a bill to establish a digital asset market structure framework. The markup is one of the first attempts by the chamber to advance market structure legislation amid the Senate Banking Committee postponing its markup after Coinbase pulled its support for the bill.…

Binance Futures announced it will add two new USDⓈ-margin perpetual futures contracts to its platform to expand trading options and improve user experience. According to the announcement, the XPTUSDT and XPDUSDT perpetual contracts will be gradually launched on January 30, 2026. The XPTUSDT contract will be available to users at 13:00, and the XPDUSDT contract at 13:15. Both contracts will offer leverage of up to 100x. The new contracts will have precious metals as underlying assets. XPTUSDT will be priced in US dollars and represent 1 troy ounce of platinum, while XPDUSDT will represent 1 troy ounce of palladium, also…

A decade ago, the crypto market was straightforward: When bitcoin $BTC$76,540.50 surged, some 500 or more alternative cryptocurrencies followed suit; when it plunged, the entire market crashed. Portfolios spread across “diverse tokens” with unique use cases looked diversified on paper, but cratered during the bitcoin slides. Fast forward to 2026, and very little has changed, even though the number of altcoins has increased to several thousand. Despite institutions supposedly painting crypto as a multifaceted asset class akin to stocks, with each project boasting distinct investment appeal, the reality is grim. The market’s still a one-trick pony, following $BTC up and…

Finst, a Netherlands-based regulated crypto exchange, announced an €8 million Series A round led by Endeit Capital, lifting its total funding to €15 million. The round attracted continued support from existing investors, including Eelko van Kooten, founder of Spinnin’ Records, and Mark Fransen, co-founder of DEGIRO. The company will direct the new capital toward European expansion, enhanced staking products, expanded asset selection, new platform features, and additional offerings for retail and professional users. “Our mission has been clear from day one: to make crypto investing safer, fairer and radically more transparent,” Finst co-founder Julien Vallet said. “With this Series A…

With another $25 million from Ripple and $24 million from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the crypto industry’s chief campaign-finance fund, the Fairshake political action committee, is amassing unprecedented firepower for this year’s midterm congressional elections. The crypto super PAC that exploded onto the scene in the last political cycle is set to report it has $193 million on-hand, according to a Wednesday statement. If it were to spend that money this year, it would likely stand among the top five PACs in the country, rivaling the 2024 tallies of the parties’ own top campaign-finance organizations. It was already ranked as the…

Crypto Twitter is angry again. This time, the target is familiar: Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, and its co-founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ). Over the past few days, major allegations have taken over Twitter (or X) timelines, with some users calling him “a scammer” and demanding he be “sent back to prison.” So what is actually behind the latest accusations, and how much of it is supported by verifiable evidence? The October Market Crash: What Happened? One of the most serious allegations facing Binance dates back to October, during what later became known as “Crypto Black Friday.” On October 10,…

The Central Bank (CBI) of Iran bought $507 million of Tether’s $USDT stablecoin with the primary purpose of manipulating foreign exchange markets and bolstering the value of the rial, which recently traded at 1.4 million for one U.S. dollar, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. Elliptic said it uncovered the purchases through two leaked documents that allowed researchers to map out the central bank’s wallet infrastructure, “revealing a systematic accumulation of $USDT totaling at least half a billion dollars,” a report by Tom Robinson said. “It indicates a sophisticated strategy to bypass the global banking system.” The United Nations imposed…

In a recent Roundtable interview, Bilal Bin Saqib, chairman of Pakistan’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) and CEO of the Pakistan Crypto Council, told host Jackson Hinkle that Pakistan isn’t trying to catch up to the region. He’s instead betting on the country to set the pace. Pakistan’s regulatory ambition takes shape Pressed on why Asia feels “lagging” on adoption outside of places like Singapore, Saqib said Pakistan plans to “create an enabling environment” and a regulatory framework that countries “from Morocco to Malaysia will get inspired from.” He framed the push as a generational shift, arguing Pakistan’s leadership wants…