Author: NBTC

Energy giants rarely make quiet moves. They make statements. Engie just made one that could redefine how utilities treat excess power. The French energy major announced plans to convert surplus electricity from its massive Brazil solar plant into Bitcoin mining revenue. Investors reacted instantly, pushing ENGIY shares to a 52 week high. The decision centers on using curtailed electricity that would otherwise go unused. Instead of wasting clean power, Engie plans to channel it into data centers dedicated to crypto operations. This strategy blends renewable innovation with digital asset economics. It also positions solar powered Bitcoin mining as a serious…

Base, the Ethereum Layer-2 network incubated by Coinbase, has seen its total value locked (TVL) fall by $1.4 billion in the past few weeks. The decline comes as public debate over the chain’s strategy and product direction intensifies. Base TVL Slides as Builders, Critics, & Coinbase Leadership Clash Over the Chain’s Direction Base TVL has dropped from about $5.3 billion in January to roughly $3.9 billion as of this writing. Base TVL. Source: DefiLlama The drop matters because TVL remains one of the most closely watched indicators of capital activity and developer confidence in blockchain ecosystems. However, TVL fluctuations are…

The digital assets advocacy group Stand With Crypto grew by 675,000 online signups last year, reaching about 2.6 million in the U.S. as the country heads toward its 2026 congressional elections. The group has been deploying its members into political letter-writing campaigns to support U.S. crypto legislation, totaling 925,000 in 2025 and more than a million emails since its founding, according to a Thursday report shared with CoinDesk. It now has chapters in every state, the group said, and it’s organized four fly-ins to Washington to directly engage in policy efforts. In October, it announced it had coordinated 250,000 letters…

Pump.fun token issues and graduations have been shifting in the past few days, after introducing cashback coins. Weekly graduations increased to 1.15% of all tokens, the highest level since the summer of 2025. Pump.fun ran another attempt to boost token creation and graduations. Over the past few weeks, token graduations have been rising, leading to higher fees for Pump.Swap. Pump.fun graduations kept rising in the past weeks, reaching a seven-month high | Source: Dune Analytics Overall, token graduations are on average 1.15% of new launches, as the metric climbed above 1% for the first time in months. Historically, the peak…

If you want to understand the AI and data center boom in 2026, don’t just look at GPUs, megawatts, or backlog announcements. Look at the bond market. This article first appeared in Miner Weekly, a weekly newsletter by Blocksbridge Consulting curating the latest news in energy, compute, infrastructure, and data analysis from The Energy Mag. The original article can be viewed here. Over the past 12 months, more than $33 billion of long-term senior notes have been issued by just a short list of bitcoin mining/AI infrastructure companies, utilities and power producers — and that’s excluding convertible notes. This isn’t…

Midnight Network has revealed Google Cloud as one of the first operators of its federated nodes as it aims for full decentralization later this year. Other launch partners include asset manager Blockdaemon, blockchain firm AlphaTON and Shielded Technologies, the company behind Midnight. The Midnight Foundation has revealed the first three operators of federated nodes for its privacy-focused network, led by cloud computing leader Google Cloud. Midnight Network launched the testnet last year, and during the recent Consensus conference in Hong Kong, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson revealed that the mainnet will roll out before the end of next month, as we…

The Ethereum ecosystem finds itself at a crossroads as it grapples with significant concerns over privacy and extractable value, threatening the stability of its blockchain framework. The battle between maintaining transparency and maximizing extractable value (MEV) exacerbates issues like scalability and market equity. Notably, bots leveraging Layer 2 solutions dominate more than half of the network’s gas usage as they hunt for MEV, all the while enjoying considerably reduced fees, thus posing a fundamental threat to market stability. What Is the Economic Fallout of MEV Tactics?How Are Different Paths Towards Privacy Being Explored? What Is the Economic Fallout of MEV…

JPMorgan (JPM) said there are growing signs that the recent selloff in crypto markets may be nearing a bottom, with flow and positioning indicators pointing to stabilization after heavy de-risking late last year. “Signs of a bottoming out in January are also seen in other crypto indicators in perpetual futures and in our position proxies on CME futures,” analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote. Bitcoin $BTC$90,366.40 and ether $ETH$3,090.81 exchange-traded funds (ETFs) saw notable outflows in December, even as global equity ETFs attracted a record $235 billion of inflows, the bank said in a Wednesday report. That divergence underscored how…

HONG KONG — Oleg Ogienko, A7A5’s director for Regulatory and Overseas Affairs, is looking to debate anyone who accuses him of breaking any compliance laws through his stablecoin company. Speaking to CoinDesk during Consensus Hong Kong, the public face of the Ruble-denominated stablecoin issuer A7A5 — which grew faster last year than $USDT or $USDC — stressed that, like any stablecoin issuer, compliance with the laws of where it is incorporated is key (in this case, Kyrgyzstan), and criminals are not welcome on the platform. “We are fully compliant with the regulations of Kyrgyzstan. We do not do illegal things,”…

AEON has teamed up with Ultima in a move designed to push crypto out of the portfolio and into the pocket. The strategic integration announced today brings support for the $ULTIMA token across AEON’s global payment rails, letting users pay with $ULTIMA at checkout via AEON Pay, AEON’s Web3 mobile payments product, both online and at physical stores. The partnership positions $ULTIMA for everyday spending, from coffee runs to service purchases, while folding the token into AEON’s longer-term vision for AI-native economic systems. Under the deal, AEON Pay users will be able to transact directly from wallets and exchanges that…