Author: NBTC

Leading asset management firm BlackRock is looking to expand its ETF offerings after establishing a remarkable foothold in the Bitcoin ETF and Ethereum ETF ecosystem. Following a recent report from the Arkham Intelligence platform, the firm is making preparations to debut a new Ethereum-based ETF offering that aims to generate yield through staking. With its design, the proposed Ethereum-based ETF product seeks to redefine how institutional investors gain exposure to crypto, especially Ethereum. Introducing iShares Ethereum Trust Although the product is yet to officially launch, it is dubbed the iShares Staked Ethereum Trust and expected to trade under the ticker…

A US federal judge has granted Amazon’s request for a preliminary injunction against Perplexity, finding the company likely violated federal and California computer fraud laws by using its Comet AI browser to access password-protected Amazon accounts without permission. US District Judge Maxine Chesney of the Northern District of California on Monday ordered Perplexity to pause its Comet AI agent’s ability to shop on Amazon and to destroy any Amazon data obtained through the activity. The temporary injunction blocks the tool from entering password-protected sections of Amazon while the case proceeds. Perplexity has one week to appeal before the injunction takes…

Revolut, the U.K. fintech giant that offers crypto trading, filed an application for a U.S. banking license with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a key step in its push to expand in the American financial system. If approved, the license would allow the London-based company to operate more like a traditional bank in the world’s largest economy. The company said it would gain direct access to payment networks such as Fedwire and the Automated Clearing House (ACH), systems that move trillions of dollars between banks each year. A license could also open the door to lending…

The convergence of AI and Blockchain has progressed past being a subject of speculation and toward an actual phase of structural integration. Nebulai has taken a significant step to confront the centralized monopolies of today’s technological landscape by officially forming a strategic alliance with Pundi AI. The objective of their alliance is to build a “complete decentralized AI stack” using blockchain to democratize the two most critical assets in today’s digital age: data and compute power. AI models are becoming more complex and expensive (high-end GPUs) to create. There are very few proprietary datasets, which makes it difficult to find…

Dollar-pegged tokens edged higher over the past week, pulling in roughly $703 million in fresh capital. Even with that bump, the sector remains down 0.61% month over month, a $1.9 billion dip that keeps the broader tally in check. Among the top ten stablecoin competitors over the last seven days, Blackrock’s BUIDL led the charge, leaping 36.03% higher. Stablecoin Market Caps Shift as February Closes Out While the stablecoin economy added to its totals this week, it remains lower over the past 30 days. Over that stretch, adjusted transaction volume tracked by Artemis Terminal reached roughly $7.5 trillion. That figure…

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has introduced proposed legislation that would ban prediction market contracts tied to terrorism, war, assassination, and death, directly challenging market regulator CFTC’s shift toward looser regulation of event trading. The bill, dubbed the DEATH BETS Act, would strip the agency of discretion over whether to permit such contracts and write explicit prohibitions into law, putting Schiff on a collision course with CFTC Chair Mike Selig’s deregulatory agenda. Schiff, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee that oversees the CFTC, is positioned to press the issue legislatively as the agency’s new rule making takes shape. Under the…

Crypto firms have spent years trying to gain direct access to the plumbing of the U.S. financial system. Kraken has now become the first to get it. The decision could reshape how digital-asset firms move dollars and interact with the traditional financial system, reducing dependence on partner banks. What a Fed Master Account Actually is A master account is essentially the gateway to the Federal Reserve’s payment infrastructure. Banks and certain regulated financial institutions use these accounts to hold reserves at the central bank and to settle payments through systems such as Fedwire. Instead of routing transactions through intermediary banks,…

POAP, the blockchain-based platform that turned event attendance into digital collectibles, is entering maintenance mode — ending active development on its current platform after nearly seven years as a fixture of the Web3 community. In a post on X, POAP co-founder and general manager Isabel Gonzalez announced that starting March 16, 2026, new issuers will no longer be able to create POAPs through the platform’s issuer interfaces. Existing issuers, integrations, and collector-facing tools will continue to function, but the platform itself will no longer receive active development. “Some operations may also run more slowly as we reduce the resources allocated…

A crypto user has lost millions during a crypto swap on the decentralized finance protocol Aave, with a Maximal Extractable Value, or MEV, bot also front-running the transaction to make almost $10 million. A recently funded wallet from Binance containing $50.4 million USDt (USDT) executed a swap via decentralized exchange aggregator CoW Protocol and the SushiSwap DEX on Thursday, aiming to convert the full amount into the Aave ($AAVE) token. However, the wallet only received 327 $AAVE tokens valued at approximately $36,000, according to Etherscan. The result was an almost total loss as the user paid around $154,000 per $AAVE,…

The rial, Iran’s official currency, has failed in 2026. Hyperinflation chews through savings every single day. Sanctions stack on top of bad decisions and endless geopolitical pressure. Every day, folks wake up to less money. Families scramble to buy basics while everything they saved disappears. This feels too familiar. Lebanon went through the exact same crisis starting in late 2019. The same kind of banking freeze, the same worthless currency slide, the same desperate search for anything that holds value. Bitcoin turned out to be that financial safe haven then. Signs point to it doing the same in Iran now.…