Author: NBTC

Bitcoin (BTC)-backed lending company Lava recently claimed to have saved its users “millions in interest costs” by refinancing their loans to interest rates as low as “7% all-in for a full year.” To several critics who have questioned the company over the past few weeks, that claim was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Jack Mallers of Strike, a BTC-backed competitor of Lava, published a spreadsheet to debunk the claim. In response to a customer request to match Lava’s advertised 5% rate after Strike announced a 9.5% rate for BTC-backed loans, Mallers explained the difference between the two lenders.…

India’s Parliament heard an unusually crypto-native pitch on Tuesday, as a Member of Parliament urged the government to bring a “Tokenization Bill,” he says, that could turn office towers, highways, and intellectual property into investable slices for India’s middle class. Speaking in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday, MP Raghav Chadha pushed for a tokenization bill that would enable fractional ownership of real estate, infrastructure projects, and other traditionally expensive assets through digital tokens. Why does India need a 𝗧𝗼𝗸𝗲𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗕𝗶𝗹𝗹?I explained in Parliament today. pic.twitter.com/Ucw395cWpg — Raghav Chadha (@raghav_chadha) December 16, 2025 “Just as UPI (Unified Payments Interface) made digital…

Key Takeaways Crypto.com and DBS Bank have expanded their collaboration to improve SGD and USD deposit and withdrawal options for users in Singapore. The partnership allows Crypto.com customers to use additional banking rails and unique virtual accounts, enhancing fiat payment convenience under MAS regulations. Crypto.com has enhanced its fiat payment capabilities in Singapore through a partnership with DBS, the largest bank in Southeast Asia, the company announced Thursday. The collaboration allows Crypto.com users in Singapore to deposit and withdraw SGD and USD through unique virtual accounts, improving the ease and speed of transactions under the regulatory framework of the Monetary…

Ethereum developers discussed raising the block gas limit from 60 million to between 75 million and 80 million gas during their All Core Developers meeting. Nethermind developer Ben Adams stated confidence in implementing the increase following the second blob parameter-only (BPO) fork scheduled for January. The gas limit increase requires two client-level optimizations before deployment. On the execution-layer side, partial blob responses require implementation via the engine_getblobsv3 method. On the consensus layer side, the max blobs flag requires integration across client software. Client Teams Express January Readiness Ethereum Foundation Developer Operations Engineer Barnabas Busa requested that all execution layer client…

Blue Origin landed its New Glenn booster on an ocean barge for the first time Thursday, a step that moved Jeff Bezos’ rocket company into more direct competition with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its reusable rockets. The landing followed New Glenn’s launch of NASA’s Escapade mission toward Mars. New Glenn lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 3:55 p.m. ET with the twin ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration Dynamics Explorers) probes bound for deep space.  The mission had been postponed earlier in the week when elevated solar activity forced NASA to stop a planned attempt over concerns…

California Governor Gavin Newsom has launched a website tracking what he calls President Donald Trump’s “criminal cronies,” a list that includes Trump himself alongside convicted drug lords, January 6 insurrectionists, and several prominent crypto figures who have received presidential pardons. The tracker, unveiled Tuesday, spotlights Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht, and BitMEX co-founders Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, Gregory Dwyer, and Samuel Reed, among the recipients of Trump’s pardons. CRIMINAL IN CHIEF: DONALD TRUMP 34 felony convictions. Cozying up to convicted sex traffickers. Cashing in on crypto grifts. Inviting foreign influence into American politics.This is the standard…

Safello will custody bitcoin used as collateral for loans issued by Fuels Capital, launching a revenue‑sharing pilot in Stockholm. Safello, a cryptocurrency exchange focused on the Nordic countries, announced in Stockholm that it has entered a partnership with Fuels Capital to act as custodian for bitcoin‑backed loans. The agreement establishes a six‑month pilot during which Safello will receive a share of revenue generated from the loans it secures. The collaboration lets Safello leverage its existing custody infrastructure and MiCA‑authorized crypto‑asset service status to tap into the growing crypto‑backed lending market, while Fuels Capital gains a reliable custodian for its collateral.…

Running an Ethereum node is about to get much easier. The Ethereum Foundation has just unveiled three crucial technical proposals designed to tackle one of the network’s growing pains: the immense and ever-increasing burden of data on node operators. This move is a direct response to ensure the network’s foundational principles—decentralization and censorship resistance—remain strong as adoption surges. For anyone involved in Ethereum node operation, this news signals a pivotal shift towards a more sustainable and accessible future. Why is Easing the Ethereum Node Operation Burden So Critical? Imagine a library that never throws away a book. As Ethereum grows,…

Nearly a quarter of adults with internet access might own cryptocurrency in the Asia Pacific region, a report, produced jointly by Protocol Theory and CoinDesk, said Friday. The report, based on a survey of 4,020 people in 10 different countries and extrapolated to the broader APAC region, further suggested that crypto adoption is spurred by a lack of access to traditional financial services. Meanwhile, stablecoins are adopted by nearly 18% of adults with internet access in emerging markets in the region. How quickly adoption continues to grow will depend on how easy it is to use digital assets in everyday…

Dubai’s financial center regulator, the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) has changed its tune when it comes to crypto assets, from having to approve crypto tokens to be used at the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC) to opening it up to all crypto tokens. The new updated rule will come into force in early 2026, on January 12th 2026. The new update opens up Dubai’s DIFC to more crypto assets This is a departure from the crypto regime that DFSA introduced back in 2022, as it is now putting the responsibility on the firms that are involved in offering or…