Author: NBTC

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, reported a major reduction in its direct exposure to illicit crypto activity even as global trading volumes and user engagement surged last year. In its “State of the Blockchain 2025” report, the exchange stated that it had reduced its direct exposure to major categories of illicit funds by 96% since 2023. Currently, its compliance and related teams make up nearly a quarter of its total workforce. Beyond compliance, Binance expanded into key markets, achieving $34 trillion in annual trading volume, and became the first global crypto platform fully authorized under the Abu Dhabi Global…

16 December 2025 – Tether, the largest company in the digital assets industry, announced today that it has made a strategic investment in Speed1, Inc. (“Speed”), a payments infrastructure company building instant, global settlement rails using the Bitcoin Lightning Network and stablecoins. Tether led the company’s $8 million funding round together with ego death capital. Speed processes more than $1.5 billion in annual payment volume across consumers, creators, platforms, and enterprise merchants. Its products (Speed Wallet and Speed Merchant) serve 1.2 million users and businesses, offering instant payments, native BTC and USDT settlement, and high-reliability global routing for enterprise integrations.…

SEOUL, South Korea – In a striking enforcement trend, Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) in South Korea bore a disproportionate 77% of all financial penalties from the nation’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) over a recent 28-month period. This data, exclusively reported by Digital Asset, highlights a focused regulatory scrutiny on the crypto sector. Despite VASPs constituting a mere 4.2% of the 95 total sanction cases, they accounted for the overwhelming majority of the 54 billion won ($39.1 million) in total fines levied. The single largest penalty targeted Dunamu, operator of the Upbit exchange, with a monumental 35.2 billion won ($25.5…

Cryptocurrency traders increasingly leaned on automated strategies in 2025 as volatile but largely range-bound markets made directional bets harder to sustain, according to a year-end recap from HTX. The Seychelles-based exchange, formerly known as Huobi, said the trend was most visible in the growing use of grid-based trading bots on its spot platform. According to HTX, grid trading volume rose 97% year over year in 2025, while capital allocated to grid strategies doubled. The increase was especially pronounced in stablecoin pairs, where grid trading volume rose 352% year over year, compared with 122% growth in major cryptocurrencies. HTX said the…

The CFTC Chair has established an innovation panel to address rapidly growing areas, including cryptocurrencies and prediction markets. This move signals the agency’s serious commitment to emerging financial technologies. The CFTC states that the new panel will enable it to understand better and oversee digital financial systems. Besides traditional markets for things like crops and metals, the CFTC is now increasingly involved in new spaces such as blockchain-based assets and platforms where people bet on future events. Recently, Michael Selig became the Chair of the CFTC. Shortly after taking charge, Selig announced that the CFTC would rename one of its…

An institutional-grade exchange executes trades at predictable prices, enforces clear limits, withstands traffic spikes and protects traders from accidentally moving the market with large orders. However, a truly good exchange is defined by how it behaves when markets break. In other words, what makes an exchange good is its ability to perform when markets get messy, not how polished it looks on the surface. Last year, CoinDesk released its November 2025 Exchange Benchmark, with 81 exchanges scored across governance, licensing, audits, KYC, proof of reserves, uptime and other metrics. It’s a helpful reference and shows progress across the board. The…

The U.S. labor market appears to have continued to soften in recent months as the government caught up to reports that had been delayed due to the shutdown in D.C. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 64,000 in November, according to a Tuesday morning report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economist estimates had been for jobs growth of 50,000. The November unemployment rate rose to a four-year high of 4.6%, versus expectations of 4.4% and 4.4% in September. For October, the economy saw jobs decline by 105,000 versus 119,000 added in September. The negative October print, however, was surely influenced by…

US Senators Cynthia Lummis and Ron Wyden have introduced standalone legislation to ensure that blockchain developers and service providers who don’t directly handle user funds are exempt from money transmitter regulations. The Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA), introduced by Lummis and Wyden on Monday, aims to clarify that writing software or maintaining networks doesn’t trigger federal or state money-transfer requirements. There have been mounting concerns among crypto developers about being held criminally liable for the way people choose to use their software. Last year, Tornado Cash co-founders Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev were found guilty of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting…

Coinbase is accelerating its push to dominate global crypto trading, fueled by surging liquidity, expanding derivatives and spot markets, and growing institutional demand, as CEO Brian Armstrong signals confidence in the platform’s next phase of scale. Brian Armstrong Targets 2026 Growth as Coinbase Liquidity Deepens Across Global Markets Crypto exchange Coinbase (Nasdaq: COIN) detailed strong momentum across its markets business, pointing to expanding scale, deeper liquidity, and rapid product innovation across spot and derivatives platforms. The publicly traded company outlined Coinbase Markets’ performance on Jan. 9, 2026, emphasizing global reach, infrastructure upgrades, and growing institutional participation. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong…

Frontera Labs, a blockchain development and research firm, has raised a $3 million seed round led by Maven 11 Capital, with Lightspeed Faction joining as a major investor, the company said in a press release Tuesday. Halo Capital, Heartcore Capital, Anchorage Digital Ventures, Nayt Technologies, Split Capital and a group of angel investors also participated in the round. Frontera Labs is building Strata, a generalized risk-tranching protocol that packages onchain and off-chain yield strategies into tokenized senior and junior tranches, each with distinct risk-return profiles. The design aims to give capital allocators more precise risk exposure while improving capital efficiency…