Author: NBTC

Alpaca closed a $150 million Series D round, pushing the brokerage infrastructure provider to a $1.15 billion valuation. Drive Capital led the deal, and Co‑Founder and Partner Chris Olsen will take a seat on Alpaca’s board. The company also arranged a $40 million line of credit to bolster its balance sheet as it scales. The firm operates as a brokerage infrastructure provider, offering APIs and self‑clearing custody that support stocks, ETFs, options, crypto and fixed income products. Alpaca says it now works with more than 300 organizations in over 40 countries and supports millions of brokerage accounts at financial institutions…

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent fired warning shots at crypto insiders who are pushing back in the negotiations over a digital assets market structure bill in the Senate — briefly aligning with Democratic Senator Mark Warner in expressing frustration during a hearing on Thursday. “There seems to be a nihilist group in the industry who prefers no regulation over this very good regulation,” Bessent said in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee.  “Amen, brother,” said Virginia Senator Warner, one of the key Democratic negotiators on the bill. “So weigh in.” “I do,” Bessent responded. “Early and often.” A number of…

Ethereum price today trades near $1,924 after rebounding from a session low at $1,742, its lowest level since May 2025. The bounce comes alongside a rare flip to positive spot flows, but insider selling from Vitalik Buterin and Trump-linked $WLFI is raising questions about whether smart money believes the bottom is in. Spot Inflows Flip Positive At $224 Million $ETH Netflows (Source: Coinglass) Despite the insider selling, Coinglass data shows $224.27 million in spot inflows on February 6, marking a dramatic reversal from the outflows that dominated the past two weeks. This represents one of the largest single-day inflow readings…

US President Donald Trump has framed Greenland as a national security priority. However, beneath this rhetoric, the push appears closely linked to the interests of the American technology sector. Greenland’s vast territory, abundant mineral reserves, and small population make it an appealing gateway to critical resources for advanced industries. In this context, the prospect of a US takeover is hardly surprising. America’s tech billionaires were among the key financial backers of Trump’s 2024 campaign. Such support rarely comes without expectations. Why Greenland Reentered Trump’s Focus One of the first times Trump discussed Greenland was in August 2019, during his first…

Exactly one year ago, “crypto czar” David Sacks hosted a press conference alongside Representative French Hill, Senator John Boozman, Senator Tim Scott, and Representative GT Thompson to announce they hoped to advance a stablecoin regulation bill and a cryptocurrency market structure bill out of both the Senate and the House within 100 days. Despite these bold commitments, neither of these bills was passed within those first 100 days. Eventually, the stablecoin regulation bill would be passed, in the form of the GENIUS Act, but well after the self-imposed deadline had lapsed. Read more: David Sacks sends silly legal threat to…

Wall Street erupted after Donald Trump said he wants a one‑year 10% cap on credit card interest rates. Big U.S. banks warned the plan would hit a major source of income and make it harder to lend to millions of Americans. The average card rate is 19.6%, and cards handle 70% of all U.S. retail payments. Wall Street leaders said forcing rates down would push them to cut back on who gets credit. Banks warn the cap would cut lending and hit growth Citigroup finance chief Mark Mason said the cap would cause “a restriction on providing credit in the…

Kalshi says it’s expanding surveillance on its prediction markets platform with an independent advisory committee and partnerships to catch insider trading and market manipulation just days ahead of the Super Bowl. Kalshi said on Thursday that the committee would give a quarterly rundown to the company’s outside counsel and publish statistics on investigations into suspicious activity on the platform. It is also teaming up with crypto trading surveillance platform Solidus Labs and the director of Wharton Forensic Analytics Lab, Daniel Taylor, “to detect, investigate, and address market abuse.” The move comes three days before Super Bowl 60, one of the…

COTI Foundation, the organization behind the L1 blockchain ecosystem, COTI Network, has announced an exclusive expansion to COTI Earn. With the new expansion strategy for COTI Earn, the flagship liquidity-based earning entity, COTI Foundation attempts to offer exclusive earning opportunities to those holding $ADA and $USDT tokens. As per COTI Foundation’s official press release, the platform is benefiting these token holders through the COTI Network-based Carbon DeFi, a well-known DeFi liquidity platform. Hence, the consumers can bridge the $ADA and $USDT tokens into $COTI to subsequently deploy them in robust liquidity strategies for daily token points (TPS). https://t.co/47PfZQodhl — COTI…

Ethereum investment vehicle Trend Research continued to reduce its Ether exposure, as the latest market crash pushed the treasury company to sell off its assets to pay back loans. It held about 651,170 Ether ($ETH) in the form of Aave Ethereum wrapped Ether (AETHWETH) on Sunday. That amount dropped by 404,090, to about 247,080 on Friday, at the time of writing. Trend Research transferred 411,075 $ETH to cryptocurrency exchange Binance since the beginning of the month, according to blockchain data platform Arkham. The transfers occurred as $ETH price dropped almost 30% in the past week, to as low as $1,748…

Visa is now clearing stablecoin payments at a yearly rate of $4.5 billion, as demand picks up from companies offering crypto-linked cards. It’s still a tiny slice of the $14.2 trillion in payments Visa processed in 2025, but it’s growing month after month, according to Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto. Sheffield told Reuters that Visa sees a real shot at staying ahead by helping stablecoins plug into the payment world we already use. “Even if you’re building something new with stablecoins, you still have to connect it back to the current system if you want people to actually use…