Author: NBTC

A federal appeals court rejected the final bid of crypto bank Custodia to challenge the U.S. Federal Reserve’s authority over granting master accounts, but the decision arrives at a time that the central bank is opening other avenues for such accounts. A Fed master account grants access to the central bank’s payment rails and full services, allowing an institution to cut out go-between arrangements, so it’s been coveted by emerging crypto banks like Wyoming-chartered Custodia Bank. The bank has been fighting with the Fed for years over the initial rejection of its master-account application, and later over whether the central…

Permabull Tom Lee of Fundstrat Global Advisors has endorsed the $250,000 price target for Ethereum ($ETH), which was outlined in a recent report. Lee, one of Wall Street’s most famed permabulls, claims that the report is a “fresh and comprehensive take” on Ethereum’s future. To me, this is a fresh and comprehensive take by @Etherealize_io on the importance of ethereum and how the $ETH coin will play an increasingly important role as a unit of exchange – the case for $250,000 $ETH ‼️🚨 https://t.co/0IEoNEmwRe pic.twitter.com/dGCWL40NHb — Thomas (Tom) Lee (not drummer) FundstratDirect.com (@fundstrat) April 22, 2026 The $31 trillion math…

A US federal court has rejected Custodia Bank’s final attempt to challenge the Federal Reserve’s authority over granting master accounts — effectively ending the crypto-focused bank’s five-year-long battle for direct access to the central bank’s payment system. The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit said in a filing on Friday that it wouldn’t hear Custodia’s final appeal on that point in a 7-3 vote. Custodia first applied for a master account in October 2020, which allows financial institutions to hold reserves directly at the Federal Reserve and access its payment rails, enabling them to settle transactions without relying…

OCBC, one of Singapore’s largest banking and financial services corporations, has launched a tokenized physical gold fund, with the underlying token, GOLDX, issued on both Ethereum and Solana. The launch was made together with its asset management arm, Lion Global Investors and digital asset exchange DigiFT. The token is aimed at institutional investors, hedge funds and asset managers and can be bought and sold using both stablecoins and fiat currencies. After subscription, the token is delivered directly to investors’ blockchain wallets, OCBC said on Monday. Kenneth Lai, head of global markets at OCBC, said the move is part of a…

Ethereum price action continues to compress within a well-defined range after its sharp early-year decline, leaving traders focused on a decisive breakout. The daily chart shows a market that has cooled from aggressive selling pressure into a tighter consolidation phase. This shift suggests a pause rather than a full reversal. Consequently, market participants now watch key levels closely as volatility contracts and positioning builds. The broader structure still favors caution, yet subtle changes in momentum hint that a larger move may soon unfold. Range Compression Signals Imminent Move $ETH trades between $2,050 and $2,350, forming a clear horizontal range. This…

A US appeals court moved ahead to reject a request submitted by Custodia Bank to reconsider its legal challenge against the Federal Reserve. The push was over the access to the central bank’s payment system. The dismissal marks another setback in the bank’s long-running attempt to obtain a master account. The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit voted 7–3 against granting Custodia’s petition for a rehearing before the full court. The request was filed to overturn an October ruling that Reserve Banks have legal discretion to deny master accounts to institutions that are seeking direct access to…

Web3 gaming burned through up to $15 billion chasing a token-driven future that gamers never bought into. Data from Caladan, a market-making and trading firm, shows roughly 93% of so-called GameFi projects are now effectively dead, with token values down about 95% from their 2022 peaks and funding to studios collapsing 93% by 2025. Investors and studios poured billions into tokens and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) before building blockchain-based games containing tradable properties. Then capital shifted into AI, asset tokenization and infrastructure, and more than 300 games shut down, turning Web3 gaming into a cautionary tale about chasing speculation over product-market…

RippleX researcher Aanchal Malhotra has warned that the window to prepare for quantum computing disruption is rapidly shrinking. As reported by U.Today, Ripple has unveiled a multi-phase roadmap to make the $XRP Ledger (XRPL) fully “post-quantum ready” by 2028. Google’s 2026 quantum breakthrough A landmark whitepaper published by Google’s Quantum AI has prompted various cryptocurrency projects to reassess their quantum readiness. The general consensus used to be that quantum computing would not pose a fatal threat to global financial infrastructure in the near future. The cryptography community used to believe that breaking the 256-bit Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECDSA) used by…

Imagine your grandmother puts her life savings into Aave – one of the biggest DeFi protocols on the planet. Then on Monday morning she tries to withdraw and cannot. Not because Aave was hacked. Aave says it is operating as intended. Not because rsETH was hacked. rsETH says all code is safe. Not because LayerZero was hacked. LayerZero says everything is working fine. She just cannot get her money out. That scenario played out for real depositors this past weekend. And now Michael Egorov, the founder of Curve Finance, one of DeFi’s most battle-tested protocols, has had enough. “WTF? Are…

W3.io, an operating system for autonomous finance, and Space and Time, a data blockchain platform, have joined forces to deliver a verifiable infrastructure designed for autonomous financial workflows, now running in production with over 200,000 workflows processed daily. The partnership addresses the accountability gap that opens up when AI agents make financial decisions faster than any human can track them. “You need a database that is built for accountability. Full stop,” Porter Stowell, chief executive of W3.io, said in a statement. “When AI agents are moving real money across multiple vendors, the question is not whether you have a workflow.…