Author: NBTC

EMB: Feb. 11, 06:00 UTC Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Spark is pushing one of DeFi’s deepest pools of stablecoin liquidity further into institutional markets, unveiling new lending infrastructure designed to connect on-chain capital with off-chain borrowers that have largely stayed outside DeFi. The protocol introduced Spark Prime and Spark Institutional Lending in an announcement at Consensus Hong Kong 2025 on Wednesday. The new offerings extend more than $9 billion in deployed stablecoin liquidity into products aimed at hedge funds, trading firms and fintechs that operate under traditional custody and compliance requirements. Off-chain crypto lending is estimated at about $33 billion,…

The cryptocurrency market has been ranging over the past two days, with many coins and tokens currently in the red. Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency by market cap, is stuck below the $69k level as it is up by less than 1% in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, Ether, the leading altcoin by market cap, is down by 1% and is now trading around $2,011 per coin. BitMine adds more Ether to its treasury Copy link to section The bearish performance comes despite Ethereum ($ETH) treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) adding to its digital asset stash last week, acquiring 40,613…

Key Takeaways Standard Chartered is planning to launch a crypto prime brokerage under its venture capital arm, SC Ventures. The brokerage aims to serve institutional clients with services like custody, financing, trading, and clearing for digital assets. Standard Chartered, the leading British multinational bank, is considering launching a crypto prime brokerage that would sit under the bank’s venture capital unit, SC Ventures, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing people with knowledge of the plan. Talks about the proposed service are still preliminary, and plans have yet to be finalized, the people said. The lender has pursued a broad digital asset strategy through…

The CFTC office widely regarded as the regulator’s “top cop” has been reduced to non-existence—at the same time the Trump administration has sought to put the shrinking agency in charge of crypto and the exploding prediction market sector. The CFTC’s flagship Chicago office—which handles the agency’s most complex enforcement actions, and once employed 20 enforcement attorneys—had been slashed down to just a single enforcement lawyer, according to a new Barron’s report citing sources familiar with the office’s moves. On Monday, the final enforcement attorney remaining in the Chicago office resigned, a Barron’s reporter confirmed following the initial publication of the…

HONG KONG — At the Consensus Hong Kong 2026 conference, the conversation surrounding decentralized finance (DeFi) took a sharp turn toward the pragmatic. The panel, “How Decentralized is DeFi Really?” saw industry leaders dismantle the “pure decentralization” myth in favor of a reality where temporary centralization is a survival mechanism. The “decentralization illusion” highlights the friction between DeFi’s permissionless ideals and its operational realities. While the goal is to replace intermediaries with smart contracts, most protocols exist on a spectrum rather than a binary state. Anand Gomes, head of Paradigm and Paradex, dismissed the idea of binary decentralization, instead framing…

Ethereum price action is showing growing downside risk as weakening liquidity and fragile rebounds increase the probability of a deeper rotation toward the $900 range low. Summary Short-term bounces lack conviction, suggesting rallies may be corrective rather than trend-changing Liquidity dynamics favor a downside sweep, with clean lows still attracting price Volatility likely to expand, if balance breaks and price seeks deeper acceptance levels Ethereum ($ETH) price continues to trade in a vulnerable position, hovering around a critical support zone known as the point of control (POC). While short-term relief bounces have emerged on lower timeframes, these moves have lacked…

The Algorand Foundation announced that Brale has expanded its custom stablecoin issuance and orchestration platform to the Algorand blockchain. The move brings regulated stablecoin infrastructure to Algorand, a Layer-1 network focused on scalability, security, and fast finality. Brale is a U.S.-regulated stablecoin issuance platform. It allows businesses to launch and manage their own stablecoins with reserve management, compliance, and banking connectivity built in. Operating under U.S. money transmitter licenses, Brale combines custody, mint-and-burn processes, and compliance tools into a single system. Through APIs, enterprises and fintech companies can integrate stablecoins into payment, treasury, and finance workflows without maintaining blockchain or…

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder of FTX and a central figure in one of the biggest scandals in the cryptocurrency world, has filed a new request for a hearing with the Southern District of New York Federal Court (SDNY). The application was registered as a “pro se” request, meaning a request made by the defendant on their own behalf. The petition submitted to the court was filed by Barbara H. Fried, Professor Emerita at Stanford University Law School. The document states that Bankman-Fried is seeking a retrial under Article 33 of the Federal Criminal Procedure Rule. A supporting legal memorandum…

STON.fi, one of the leading AMM protocols on The Open Network ($TON), announced that $TON-native representations of Bitcoin ($BTC) and Ethereum ($ETH) are now available within the ecosystem in a fully non-custodial DeFi format. The integration gives $TON users direct access to the two largest crypto assets, including the ability to swap them and provide liquidity, while maintaining full control over their funds. $BTC and $ETH are represented on $TON as wrapped assets issued in $TON-native format, each fully backed 1:1 by the underlying tokens and managed through smart contracts. Ethereum is available as wrapped $ETH (WETH), while Bitcoin is…

Chinese billionaire Bitcoin miner Jiang Zhuoer argued that investors in the US stock markets are still in the early stages of developing an interest in Ethereum ($ETH). Zhuoer, who stated that he has not sold his $ETH holdings for many years, noted that the level of understanding of Ethereum by institutional capital is similar to the crypto market during the 2014-2015 period. According to Zhuoer, Bitcoin’s “digital gold” narrative offers an easily understandable framework for investors outside of traditional finance. In contrast, Ethereum’s “smart contract” based structure is more complex, taking longer for US capital to understand $ETH. He stated…